Prior to my trip to Jasper last week, I’d been posting at a rate of about one post per day. Since then, I’ve been unable to keep up that pace here due to some other critical tasks that have required my attention. The major portion of these tasks that has been taking up my time should be completed within the next couple of days, and I have several articles planned including one on paper based vs. electronic organization.

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In the meantime, with all the talk about bear markets, I thought I’d share with you a picture of the bear we saw in Jasper last weekend. I took quite a few photos, but I’m not overly happy with many of them. Generally speaking, my Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS70 camera takes quite decent photos, but for some reason, many of them from this past weekend were over-exposed. Sometimes, I miss my old Pentax Spotmatic! Remember those? I owned one for years after it was given to me as a child as a gift, and finally sold it to a camera collector for about a hundred bucks one day when financially, things were desperate and I needed to buy groceries for my family. Those were the days!


The above photo was taken near a parking lot where we had parked our vehicle. This shot used the highest zoom level, and could be “finer.” But nevertheless, I was quite pleased to see the bear and be close enough to get any photos I could! It was not the first time I have seen bears - once some years ago on a trip to Nolalu, a very small town south of Kakabeka Falls in northern Ontario, nightly visits to the garbage dump would almost always mean viewings of bears scrounging for food.

A few years ago on a road trip near Ompah, Ontario, I rounded a corner of the highway and had to stomp on the brakes as a large black bear was standing in the middle of the road. He took a look at me and then showed off his amazing strength by climbing up a cliff in seconds and scampering off into the bush.

Black bears do have amazing strength and I certainly wouldn’t want to ever have to tangle with one. This bear at Jasper, after looking at us for a few moments, wandered over to a picnic table looking for any scraps that might have been left behind. Then we watched as it idled down to the side of the river, jumped in, and easily swam to the other side - even though the current of this river was extremely swift!

If I have an opportunity, I’ll see if I can clean up some of the other photos I took and fix the over-exposure problem and post them for you to see.

 

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