Our black bear run in and other traveling tales...

Okay, so Kat and I go to the Wildlife Conservation Center and see all these bears right? Soon after that we left and headed to the Portage Valley. It is a beautiful valley with lots of places to stop and look around. We decided to stop at a salmon viewing area. We were a little too early for the salmon in that area, but we decided to stop and enjoy the view anyway. As we were walking up to the lookout boardwalk I was getting a little nervous about black bear. We were, after all, in BEAR COUNTRY. I wasn't too nervous to go ahead with our walk though. As we were enjoying our view from the salmon viewing area, things started to get interesting. It all happened so quickly we weren't sure what was going on! We heard a large splash in the water to the right of us, we turned and saw something big and black in the water. Kat backed up into me, I grabbed her shoulders and neither one of us could actually form words! Soon the laughter began because we quickly realized that the thing we just KNEW was a black bear, was alas a big, beautiful...black LAB! We laughed and we laughed and we almost wet our pants and we shook a little because we were really scared! Had it been a black bear I am sure we would not have known what to do or how to act. It would not have been pretty! So, Kat and I will forever tell our black bear story for all to enjoy!
After our 'bear' encounter we stopped at another stop. Here is Kat reading the BEAR WARNING sign posted at the stop. Evidently a young black bear had been stealing food from the picnickers and was probably going to have to be shot. WE got back in the car and left! LOL
Another site on the way to Portage Valley was the fishermen lined up on the banks of Bird Creek! You can tell the salmon are in at Bird Creek!
The picture below is the Portage Glacier Cruise boat. It was a little cold, can you tell? The glacier was extremely blue due to all the cloud cover.