Camping out with Yogi Bear Memorial Day Weekend

Well, we got moved to our new place without any problems.  It's been a long and tiring weekend, and I have lots of unpacking to do, but I can work on that little by little throughout the next weeks.  My parents brought Michael home on Sunday afternoon, and Andy and Carrie and the kids also came for a visit.  We had a nice bbq out on the deck.  The kids fished in the ponds (they did catch some fish) and had a blast playing hide and seek in our new house.  This morning we got up and ate a nice breakfast looking out at the birds feeding on the bird feeders when my Mom exclaimed, "There's a bear!"  This mid-size fella came strolling across the lawn from the back of the house toward the bird feeders right in front of the dining room picture window.  As I'm scrambling to get my camera out of the case, he promptly stands up on his two hind feet and grabs the bird feeder and pulls the whole pole down.  He starts lunching on the sunflower seeds, and Russell runs outside to scare him off.  I start snapping pictures. 

Eating breakfast....

He spots Russell trying to scare him off and starts to retreat....

And then really retreats up the big pine tree as Russell runs toward him with a stick....

Final retreat into the woods

After all the excitement, we get back to our normal activities, and not about 20 minutes later, my mom exclaims again, "There's another bear outside; it's a different one!"  And sure enough, we look outside again, and here comes another bear, much smaller than the first (probably last year's cub), coming toward the house.  This one was much more skiddish and on guard and it didn't take much to scare him off.  Now the other one, was not very scared even with Russell outside.  Here's a picture of the second one retreating.

Hope everyone is having a great Memorial Day today.  This may in fact be my last post for a while.  I cannot get cable or DSL internet in the woods, so I'm going to have to go with cellular internet, and I'm first checking out my options now.  I may be back on line sooner than you think, so keep checking to see what's going on with our family.