Montana - August 2009 - Glacier National Park

One of the first things you receive upon arriving at Glacier National Park is one of these brochures:

Basically, it's the Idiot's Guide to Not Getting Eaten. We also learned that not enough people actually read the thing because we saw a whole lot of stupid happening as the week wore on.

The top three items to pack when hiking in Glacier are 1. water 2. food 3. bear spray. We asked a ranger her thoughts about the bear spray. She said, if we stayed on the more popular trails and made lots of noise, the likelihood of needing it was very small and it was totally up to us if we wanted to get some. Given that it costs almost $50 for a single can, we weren't sure whether or not to buy it. It didn't take us long to make a decision. Less than an hour after arriving at the park, we saw this:

It's a black bear. He was way off on the side of the road (loving the 12x zoom on my new camera!) heading towards the lake. Without a moment's hesitation, we checked into our hotel, went to the gift shop and bought this:

We even got a free lesson from the cashier on how/when to use/not use it (ie, don't bother if you're downwind unless you really like being temporarily blind). Fortunately, even though we saw several more bears and practically tripped over a very large moose, we never had to use the spray.