Who's brilliant idea was it to camp in black bear country?

Thank God we made it home safely and in one piece. We had a really good time but we had bears on our mind the entire time. One of the biggest rules was that you were not to surprise a bear - you should always make noise - so we walked around camp saying "Hey Bear" pretty much all day - it became a joke - but can you imagine if we had actually seen a bear... it wouldn't have been so funny. So the rules are as follows:

Do not surprise bears - make noise.

Do not leave food out - only when preparing or eating - all food should be stored in bear safe containers - coolers don't count because bears know what coolers are.

Food should be covered even in a car - thousands of dollars of damage every year are due to bears breaking into cars to get food.

Do not leave food in your tent at any time (remember that little boy that had his face eaten off because he had hid candy bars under his pillow?)

If you are to see a bear stand still, make noise and make yourself look big - if the bears approaches make lots of noise and walk away - do not run. If a bear attacks you kick and scream and fight for your life....

Sounds like fun huh?

We didn't see any bears though so I couldn't practice my kicking and screaming... bummer huh?

My friend Jessi wanted to see a bear so bad - she was very disappointed that there weren't any around... however 1/4 mile away at the next camp site there were bear sightings - 2 of them - a mom and a cub.... even more dangerous!

So other than saying "Hey Bear" all weekend we walked on trails, fished, went hiking on an Obsidian Mountain - it was so amazing, we walked to a waterfall and everyone swam (I didn't - I didn't bring enough clothes - but everyone else did), a bunch of them went kayaking, we went bike riding and of course ate and drank a lot.... we had a great weekend. This was all without the girls too. Sharon and Danny (Jon's parents) took the girls for 2 nights. It was so nice. I missed them like crazy though. The weekend before they had them too for our anniversary - so it was a little too much... but it was still fun and I'm glad we went. It's always nice to relax and hangout with friends.

Oh and if you didn't know - we were camping at Paulina Lake - it's like 20 minutes from La Pine Oregon and about 40 minutes from Bend..... kind of hidden up in the hills - it was beautiful. However to get there we had to drive through a wild fire - ok... maybe not through a wild fire - but we could see it from the road - it was pretty surreal - the sky was glowing this weird orange color and was full of smoke - it made it hard to see. It blew my mind that we were allowed to have a camp fire - the fire danger level was at EXTREME - but we had a camp fire every night and it was huge... the boys brought basically a whole tree to burn and they had decided they didn't want to come home with any left over wood....

Thank God we made it out of there safely - what with the bears, fire, and not to mention the longest car ride of our lives... it took us over 4 hours to get there - but here we are - safe and sound and finally bathed!!! I forgot to mention there were no showers.... it was sick! I was beginning to stink.

Anyway - that is all for now... I'm going to get back to watching Big Brother....