Aggressive Wildlife!

Hello again!  We are finally back to civilization after a week in the wilds at the family cabin.

There was family, as many as 10 plus the puppy, all at once.  There was lots of food, fun, crafts, and games.  Farkle was the new game of the season.  Let me announce to all and remind my opponents again that I won the first and only game of it that I played.  Yup.  Decisively.

There were movies.  We watched a relatively new light-hearted Christmas movie together, "Arthur Christmas."  Later then, after the kiddos were in bed, we watched Denzel Washington's latest movie, "Safe House."

Keep in mind that in order to watch a movie in our non-electric cabin, it takes a bit of genius and pre-planning.  We "needed" a flat screen TV; we brought the one from our bedroom at home.  We needed a DVD player.  Check.  We needed a deep cell marine battery.  Heavy, but worth the lug.  Check.  And finally, an inverter was required to make it all work.  Check.

When not in use, we hide the TV behind the one bedroom door.  For some reason, having a TV too obvious in our very remote cabin just doesn't seem quite right.  Aren't we ridiculous?

Sometimes we make Jiffy Pop popcorn on the stove to go with the movies, but this time we made s'mores in the fireplace.  Lots of s'mores, actually.  It's a wonder any of us slept that night after all that chocolate.  Totally worth it though.

And, we had numerous exceptional wildlife sightings, including a very large bear that would appear around dusk or dark each day, and spend quite a bit of time snooping around and napping behind our cabin.

We got some pretty good up close looks at this bear, and we estimate it was weighing nearly 300 pounds.  We had several unresolved debates as to whether it was a big guy, or a big pregnant gal.

It was fun to watch the granddaughters go to the window every 10 minutes or so, and wield the big flashlight to look out and see if he was still there.

At breakfast the one morning my parents reported that they had heard lots of bumping and scratching on the outside wall of the cabin (which is also one of their bedroom walls).

Over the years we have had quite a lot of evidence of bears chewing on and clawing up the wood on the outside of the cabin.  Apparently they do this as a way of marking their territory.  They have also snacked on the seats of our 4-wheelers on occasion.

Here is a picture of the back corner of our cabin.  In the picture you can clearly see some of the chewed areas and claw marks from bears.  The heavy duty bars over the windows are simply our protective bear bars.  Without them, we know that a determined bear, smelling our good food, would have no trouble breaking in and causing injury and damage if he had a mind to get in.

While we were packing up to leave on our last day, we noticed more fresh bear scrapes on the side of the cabin where we park the vehicles.  Here they are:

It's always an adventure with nature up there, but we love it, and feel very fortunate to have our special place in the woods.

There was also a very friendly buck that kept making an appearance.  I guess he just wanted to join in the family fun.

Maybe he was avoiding the deer hunters.  He offered to help decorate our little "Charlie Brown" Christmas tree.

So much fun!  Stay tuned, there are more adventures from our Thanksgiving holiday to come!