yellowstone & grand teton national parks

a bear, a storm, a rainbow – we had it all in an action-packed final day in yellowstone.
after a week of A-list automobiling in our luxe white mustang convertible (and in denial that it was a rental car) taking in lush, sun-drenched meadows, craggy snow-capped mountains and tame wildlife that wandered the roadside parklands, we decided that 5.30pm on our last day was as good a time as any to start a 5-mile hike into isolated backcountry area (sans torches or any other kind of illumination). I had my heart set on a hike through the Lamar Valley – aka "North America's Serengeti" – with fanciful visions of a land teeming with elk, antelope, bison and coyotes. we waited for a downpour to clear, then trotted off into a wilderness – taking shots of grazing bison and a sun-bleached elk skeleton on our way. all in all, I was a bit disappointed with the amount of wildlife – only a few measly bison, field mice and a handful of pronghorn (antelope)... and the eerie call of a pack of wolves in the distance. late in the day, we were about to head up one last hill before heading home, when kris suddenly said, "Look – a bear!" sure enough, there was a young grizzly bear about 50 metres away. engulfed with excitement, I pulled out my camera and started snapping, while kris pulled out his and started videoing the bear as it ambled along in the distance. then suddenly, the bear stopped, reared itself up on its hindlegs and stared at us - then slowly started coming our way! aaargh!
we had previously discussed our tactics for dealing with a bear encounter – kris' suggestion was to stand behind a tree, dodging the bear and always making sure the tree was between him and the bear – his reasoning was that even though bears can run much faster than humans, humans are much more nimble. In this situation, however, there were literally no trees within a 150-metre radius. I heard kris mumble, "There's a tree back there..." and he started rapidly backpeddling towards it while I desperately decided what to do.
luckily, a page from our guidebook came to mind: when stumbling upon a bear in the wild, one should slowly back away (never run), and talk to it in low, soothing tones. I passed this bit of information on to kris, and we both started saying, "Nice bear... just wants to look at us.... as we slooo-ooo-wly back away..." And it worked! as we walked backwards up a hill (difficult thing to do), the bear finally lost interest in us and wandered off in the other direction. Phew!
After that, we decided it was high time we head home. We had another sighting of the same bear, but this time we weren't so worried as it was farther away and there was an antelope between us and it (poor li'l bear seemed to have no clue what to do and just stared at the antelope – must've been his first summer out of the bear cave – awww....).
We were about a mile away from the parked mustang and deciding whether to take a short detour to a stream or just head home when we were hit by the first cold, fat droplets of rain. Time to call it a day, then. We'd only taken a few steps when it started bucketing down in sheets with lightning flashing overhead. Kris suddenly got paranoid that we would be struck by lightning as we were in an open field, so he made me run aaaall the waaaay back. so tiring. especially when I hadn't properly exercised in months, while kris was super-fit due to a running regime he had begun in all his free time.
we finally made it back to the mustang, absolutely drenched and covered in mud, and waited for the storm to clear before driving back to our hotel. It was over in a few more minutes, and we were left with the halo of a double rainbow overhead.