We have a game in the car kind of like duck, duck, goose. Ed drives, I have the camera, lens cap off, ready to go and if I'm not actively watching out the window (on the phone, fetching snacks, etc.) Ed yells Barn! If it's on my side, his hand and finger are fluttering dangerously close to my face. So as you can imagine, I have a lot of really bad photos but also reference shots for lots of barn paintings. And sometimes I miss them. Then we discuss if he yelled Barn! too late or if I'm too slow. We've been in the car a long time.
Only once has he said "Don't you have enough pictures of barns yet?".
I Love Barns
I will not win a National Geographic Award for this shot
So now about the bear. We are camping on the west side of Glacier NP and spent Saturday on the east side looking for bears. Finally, in the afternoon we got lucky. A flock of humans along the side of the road had already spotted her. Many people drove up, snapped a picture then on they went.
A couple rangers had to manage the people, as people are idiots when it comes to wildlife. Patience paid off for us. We stood in the drizzling rain and watched this beautiful black bear pop in and out of the bushes for over an hour, grazing huckleberries on the hillside. She zig zagged across the hill and eventually came closer and closer to the road. So fun watching her through binoculars and Meriwether's scope - the photos don't do it justice. She was getting very close to the road (and us), the rangers were thinking she wanted to cross the road and tried moving people back, some tween started screaming she was scared (in a fake loud dramatic fashion) ... one photographer blatantly walked past where the ranger told us not to go, crossed the road and was inching up the hillside towards the bear, so the ranger had to chase him, then the crowd proceeds to walk where they told us not to ... sigh ... time for us to leave.
It was a great hour. Thanks, bear.
