It was a good day. My wife and I had planned on driving up Price Canyon, stopping wherever we felt like it to take pictures. The camera we were using has a zoom lens more powerful than the scope on my hunting rifle, and it takes damn good pictures. Anyway, the leaves on the quakies are starting to turn bright red and yellow, so that’s what we were hoping to get some good pictures of.
We ended up taking a dirt road just before Soldier Summit, and even though I had no idea where it went, we just kept on following it. It went way up in the mountains, and it was beautiful up there, so we just kept going and taking pictures along the way. We stopped and ate lunch in a little hollow in some quakies, nearly at the top of the highest mountain in the area. When we were done, we started heading down the other side, when we saw something badass. The road was cut into a steep hillside, so the hill dropped off to the left and rose sharply to the right. I was looking off down the hill, when my wife pointed straight ahead, but didn’t say anything. I looked where she was pointing, and a black bear cub had fallen down the hillside and landed 20 feet in front of us. I said, “Holy shit!” and slammed on the brakes, then immediately rolled up my window. The bear cub scurried back onto its feet, and started running down the road away from us. After about 20 yards, he turned left and disappeared in the oak brush down the hill. We were pretty damn shocked, but we figured the momma bear was nearby, so I didn’t dare get out and see if I could see the cub. I really wanted a picture, but it all happened so fast, nobody had time to grab the camera out of the case.
The road curved around the little bowl canyon, so after waiting a while to see if the momma bear was gonna show herself, we drove to the other side and scanned the hillside down which the cub had ran (or more likely, tumbled). We never did see the cub again, or the momma, so we just went along our way.
We also saw some hawks feeding on a rabbit, but we only got pictures of them flying away. Luckily, it didn’t start raining until after we got back on the paved road, which came out by Sheep Creek, near the hot springs I like to go to (but haven’t been in a long time).
We were gone for a total of 6 hours, and most of that was spent driving…but I had a lot of fun. We’re planning on doing something like this again this weekend, only on some other dirt road we’ve never been on.