Bear Bait, the Virgina Way...

On Friday, my friend from Richmond came and picked me up.

She is an equine enthusiast also, so we were looking forward to some fun time together and visiting.
We chose to go visit a place called Dark Hollow Falls on the Shenandoah Parkway.

The fact that I could hike a trail and SEE waterfalls was doubly exciting.
Debi picked a 'round about way out of Charlottesville so we could stop off at the Dover Saddlery shop and take a peek.

[I ended up buying a saddle of all things...more on that later]

We ended up at Dark Hollow Falls and began the long hike down the Falls trail. It was steep, beautiful...
and
we sort of wondered how in the heck we were going to get back up it.

Along the way we found a very helpful sign:

[Don't you just love the stick figure?]

I found a couple of spots to get a 'little' bit closer mid way down and sat on a flat rock to take some photos.

Some other folks walked by telling us that they'd seen a Sow and her two cubs. Debi and I kept an eye out and tried to remember our black bear protocol.

When we got to the bottom of the falls we asked another set of hikers if there was another way other than just going back up the steep rocky hill ~~ to where we'd parked.

We did the happy dance when we discovered that we could walk a well marked open path back to the road and then 1 mile back to the parking area along the parkway.



The Black Bear was on our minds. Debi and I walked past some other folks and continued on the trail marveling at the general beauty~~
and
of
course,
discussing horses and mules.

We noticed some people hiking towards us ... pointing and grabbing their little point and shoot camera.
We stopped
...........................................
bears.
A Sow and her cubs.

I rammed my Nikon up to my eye and took a shot.
Then we decided to sort of start easing away.

The hikers behind us caught up and everyone started gathering and pointing.

I whispered to Debi:
Let them be Bear Bait~~

and we carefully slinked away keeping an eye over our shoulders.

We giggled like little kids and made all sorts of plans of how we'd avoid the Bear. I could run faster than Debi, but she said she was stronger than me~~and would toss me at the Bear.

Point taken, so we decided that we'd make ugly faces at it, and then if that didn't deter the Sow, we'd throw our pocket digitals at it...and my camera bag.

Right.
Debi said she would take photos to the last living second...
and we giggled some more.

Then Debi said we could throw my Nikon D40 at it since it was heavier.
Now those were fighting words.

We ended up the day tired, happy, and satisfied.
We'd had a great adventure.
Now if we'd only lived closer together we could have more fun adventures!

Bear Bait Hikers: