Backroads, Blizzards, & Bears...Oh My!!

We came home today from a short little vaca in the mountains!!

We left Thursday morning with the knowledge that Cimmaron Canyon was on fire and the road from Cimmaron to Eagle's Nest was completely closed.  Which means we went the "back" way! 

This is the smoke we could see from Wagon Mound.

By "back" roads, I mean this....

Granted only like 9 miles is dirt road, but it's not the greatest!  And then we ran into road work!  hehe, we followed him for a little while 'til he decided he was going to back up!  So we had to back up until he found a place to pull over!  It was fun times!

We did eventually make it though!  It started raining on us on the dirt road and by the time we hit Angel Fire, it had turned to snow!  Which means it was cold!  So we came in the cabin and all changed into warmer clothes!

Now I know by saying blizzard, this probably doesn't qualify, but the title was a little cuter with it!

This is Thursday early afternoon when we first got there and were headed into town for groceries.

This is the road coming back from the ski slopes, you literaly cannot see 1/2 mile in front of you it was snowing so hard!

This is what we came from from town to find! 

This is on Friday morning after Landry got up, he LOVED seeing the animals!  He basically stood at the window all weekend!

Do you see the side of that deer?  They honest to goodness kick and fight each other to get to the seed.  It was chaos!  But isn't the little one cute!

More coming across the street

Going to town

There were Elk everywhere too! I honestly have never seen as much wildlife up there as I did this time, it was crazy!!

And.....

we had a bear.

Did you catch that?

We had a BEAR!!

Friday mid-morning all the deer in our yard just stopped and looked up the road and it was almost like they froze.  I say "I wonder what in the world they're looking at?"  Chris says "oh, it's probably a bear."  Hardy har har babe.  Seeing as how I am NOT a fan of bears, I do not find that funny in the least.  So a little while later we were heading to town and looked toward the direction the deer kept looking and Chris says "I was right, there's a bear!"  It was 2 cabins up from us digging in someone's garage!  It had found a bin full of sunflower seeds and had ripped it open in their driveway! 

When we came back from the store, the bear which we though had run off, was across the street from us!

Eesh.

So we leave again for dinner in town and see more elk!

I'm tellin' ya, it was like living in a zoo all weekend!

So Friday nite, I had my back to the windows reading a book and Landry looks out the window, points and says "ahhhh."  I told him that wasn't funny that sometime when he did that there was going to be a bear outside the window.  I turn around and guess what was outside that said window? 

That's right, this guy.

So I had a panic attack. 

And finally called the police.

They told me not to worry about him as long as he wasn't bothering me.

Chris went outside and scared him, so he then decided to climb the tree!

After I calmed down, and everyone told me that he wasn't going to eat me for his dinner, I decided I better take the opportunity to take live-up close pictures of this guy.

Some pic's aren't that great since some of them are through the window or I had to lighten them up.

He kept staring at me.  I'll admit, it was freaky.

Trying to climb the tree again.

Friday nite we heard him on the porch after we went to bed and when we got up Saturday he had knocked off one of the cooking pan bird feeders off the porch.  But he was gone, so we figured we were done with the bear.

WRONG.

We went to town to get Chris a coke after Landry woke up and to see if we could find some more elk.

Instead... we find this guy at the cabin directly behind us!  That's right, he stayed right in the neighborhood all nite!

And when we got back to the cabin, he was there as well!

As scared of this guy as I was, ya got to admit he is really cute.

He kept trying to get on the porch, Landry got a huge kick out of that.

Mid afternoon on Saturday, he went across the street and we didn't see him again.

Except this morning when we got up, both the bird dishes had been knocked off, which means he had been back!!

This is the new country club!  It is HUGE and gorgeous!

These are the pictures on our way through Cimarron Canyon this morning.

The fire was pretty close to Eagle's Nest but only about 1/2 a mile was burned by the road, so it must've gone pretty high into the mountains.

Honestly, the damage that the firefighters did to tree's along the road to stop the fire from spreading looked horrible!  And the places that they had done it, the fire never went near.

I'm just certainly glad it didn't do more damage!  Cimarron Canyon is so pretty and I would hate to see it all destroyed.

We had a great time and didn't want to come home!  Hopefully next time, the bear will not be there!!