Churchill

Every night at 10 o'clock in Churchill, Manitoba, a siren rings out across the downtown area. Time to think about calling it a night before darkness envelops the town. Before it gets dangerous. Before what pretty much every visitor in Churchill both comes to see and is acutely aware of as a threat when they walk around town, even in broad daylight.

Polar bears. The largest land predator alive on Earth today. Vicious and merciless hunters. These are no grizzlies or black bears. Get into a fight with a polar bear and you won't win. You'll be food. And the chance to see some polar bears in the wild is exactly why we went to Churchill earlier this month. There's really nowhere else in North America where you stand a chance of seeing these animals in the wild like Churchill. So we headed north.

We thought we'd skip the walking around town thing. Even in broad daylight. Well, mostly anyway. We made one trip to the Arctic Trading Company. We figured it was just on the block next to our hotel. What could possibly go wrong?

We've wanted to visit Churchill for years but it's complicated. We never could seem to fit it in. And I don't just mean into our schedule. I also mean into our budget. It's expensive to head all the way up to the Hudson Bay in northern Manitoba for a few days. And considering sightings of wild polar bears are in no way guaranteed, plopping down a ton of money per day for just the opportunity to get a glimpse of one of these gorgeous creatures is a tough thing to reckon with. I mean, it's also not like you go out looking for bears every day. Most organized tours have one day only really searching for white bears.

But last year, we figured enough was enough. We decided we'd look seriously at a trip to Churchill. We searched websites. We gathered recommendations where we could. We thought about what our priorities and budget would be. We weighed the risks of doing it ourselves vs. going with a tour operator. And after all that we took the plunge and booked a tour. 

Frontiers North. Canada's Big Five Safari. August 2 through August 10, 2026. Eight nights, but just three in Churchill. And of those three nights and the best part of four whole days, just one day would be in a spot where the bears frequently hang out in a Churchill summer. This had better pay off.

Polar bear trip, Churchill, Manitoba.

Maybe a few words about these bears and how to find them in the wild as a 21st century tourist is in order. 

Type "where to find polar bears in the wild" into an internet search engine and you'll likely get some useful tourism information. Like they only live in five countries in the world: the United States (northern Alaska); Russia; Greenland; Norway; and Canada. And it seems to me that the two most accessible places to find one in the wide open Arctic (or close to it) are Svalbard north of Norway (like way north actually) and Churchill, Canada. 

You also might find out based on your internet search that polar bears are the largest bear in the world. If you have ever seen a black bear in the wild, you likely saw a creature that tops out at about 500 pounds and six feet tall when standing. And yes, I recognize that the likelihood of finding a standing black bear right next to a tape measure is pretty slim. Grizzlies are a bit bigger: try 600 pounds and eight feet tall maximum.

Polar bears can weigh up to 1,200 pounds and can stand just a bit taller than the tallest grizzly. Polar bears are big. There are also just about 30,000 left in the wild. And that may be a high estimate. There are that many grizzlies in Alaska alone and there are almost 1,000,000 black bears in North America. Polar bears are rare in addition to big.

Bear skulls. From right: polar, grizzly, black. Parks Canada Visitor Centre, Churchill.

From a tourism perspective, the yearly polar bear life cycle is not exactly intuitive. I'd say most people probably assume the best time to visit Churchill for polar bear spotting is in the winter when it's snowy and icy and super cold. You know...white bears against a white landscape. But that's just not true.

From late November to May or so, you won't find many polar bears in and around Churchill or anywhere else on solid land in northern Canada. That's because during those months they are out on the frozen ice of the Hudson Bay (Churchill is on the shore of the Hudson Bay) or wherever else they happen to roam looking for seals to eat. Seals don't live on land during the winter. They live in the sea or on the ice and when they are in the water they breath through breathing holes that may or may not have a hungry polar bear waiting for a seal face to pop up for a breath.

Bear season in Churchill is in the fall, before the Bay freezes solid. Polar bears start gathering near the ice perimeter hoping that the frozen water can support their weight long enough for them to roam for months looking for some yummy seals. All told, there are about 900 or so polar bears around the western edge of the Hudson Bay in any given season. That doesn't mean all those bears are in Churchill, but it's a concentrated number close to human settlement like no other place on Earth.

We chose to visit in the summer, a time when there are fewer polar bears around the edges of the water but there are enough out there that seeing multiple polar bears in a single excursion is eminently possible. Polar bears don't hibernate. They have to be somewhere roaming around on land in the warmer months and one of those places is Churchill. We'd done enough research to know or hope or a little bit of both that we'd see a polar bear or two. Time to take a chance.

Polar Bear Holding Facility, Churchill. Capacity 28 polar bears. 30 day stay for wandering into town.

On day six of our nine day tour with Frontiers North, we hopped on a sixty or so seat prop plane at Winnipeg Airport, rode it to about 21,000 feet above sea level and headed north to Churchill. Two or so hours later, we landed. Time to see whether booking this tour was smart or if maybe our money could have been spent better elsewhere.

There are only two ways to get to Churchill, by the way: plane or train. There are no roads that lead from the rest of Canada or lower Manitoba or wherever else you might be in the Great White North to Churchill. Fly or train. Those are the options. Flying over a landscape of unevenly shaped pools of water scattered over what was becoming more and more like tundra as we flew north really emphasized the impossibility of constructing roads across Canada's wilderness. And that's not even considering repairing frost damage. 

Want to get to Churchill? Fly or train. Although I guess you could take a boat in the summer.

We were greeted at the airport by a polar bear safety sign. Never go beyond a polar bear alert warning sign. Never walk at night after 10:00. Always travel in groups and make noise. Always stay close to a vehicle or other refuge. Always remember bears can be in town any time of day. 

Welcome to Churchill.

We received our first in-person polar bear safety briefing at the site of a 1979 plane crash about 15 minutes after leaving the airport. The downed plane, now dubbed Miss Piggy, is still there completely intact out on the rocks of the tundra. We received our words of caution while we gazed at the plane's hull right after our driver walked around a little towards the plane clapping his hands to scare away any lurking polar bears.

What stuck with me from our briefing was if you see a polar bear and you are outside the bus, yell "BUS!" as loudly as possible and run for the bus as fast as you possibly can. There may have been some other stuff like don't walk beyond the signs or something like that but yell and run as fast as possible hit home.

Bears are dangerous. Point taken. Got that. It wouldn't be the last time we were warned. One of my favorite safety signs later in our time in Churchill said do not turn and run and do not play dead. Run like hell. Got it.

15 minutes after we arrived at Miss Piggy and before we even got back on the bus, we saw our first wild polar bear. Fortunately, it was at a good distance swimming at the edge of the Bay so nobody had to yell "BUS!" or run anywhere. 

Are you kidding me? 30 minutes into our time in Churchill with a good amount of anxiety about whether we would even see a single bear and we got our first sighting. This was going to be good.

Polar bear number one. In the Hudson Bay.

The next two days, we didn't see a single bear. 

OK, so truth be told, we weren't really looking for bears. I mean, we were, but not like in an organized group tour way. Sure we looked left and right every time we stepped outside the hotel and we remained super vigilant on our very brief walks around town (like to the Arctic Trading Company). And wherever we went on the tour bus, we looked left and right into the rocks and around the fireweed. But days two and three in Churchill...no bear sightings. Not a one.

Although, funnily (or maybe not so funnily) enough when we were headed back from the Arctic Trading Company, we heard some firecracker noises. Car backfiring? Gunshots? Nope and nope. Apparently, it was the bear patrol trying to get a polar bear in town back out to the tundra. The one time we walk by ourselves anywhere that's further than 25 feet away and we are on foot when a polar bear is in town in place with a full time population of less than 1,000 people (meaning very small). No more walks outside by ourselves. We'll wait for the tour bus to take us.

On day four, the same day we were set to leave town, we went looking for bears in a serious way in a serious ride.

Our Tundra Buggy. Churchill Wildlife Management Area.

Just east of Churchill, there is a Parks Canada property called Wapusk National Park. It sits along the western edge of the southern portion of Hudson Bay and houses the largest concentration of polar bear dens in the world. Wrapping Wapusk to the west and south is a tundra area called the Churchill Wildlife Management Area. The Wildlife Management Area was the final stop on our agenda in Churchill. If we saw bears here, we'd leave town happy. If we came up empty, there was no second chance. We'd be back in Winnipeg before the clock struck midnight and we'd likely never come back. Sure, we'd seen a bear. At a great distance swimming. That wasn't what we hoped for.

Our transport for the six hours we'd spend in the Wildlife Management Area was a Tundra Buggy, a boxy, all-white vehicle on jacked up tires with a back deck for polar bear watching. Picture a vehicle just a bit less aerodynamic than a school but with a deck attached to the back of the vehicle. Or you can just look at the picture above.

Indeed, a school bus was the inspiration for the Tundra Buggy. The first models were literally school busses with a fenced platform welded to the back of the bus which was accessible through the back exit door that we rarely ever used to use when we were kids. The current Tundra Buggies I'm sure are a lot more efficient and effective than those early vehicles, although the school bus feel still permeates the inside of the 2020s Buggies, right down to the windows which are unlatched on both sides and slid down to get fresh air. Or a clear view of polar bears for the Buggy occupants.

Polar bear number two. Churchill Wildlife Management Area.

It took us about 45 minutes to see our first polar bear. Not in the water swimming with his (or her) head barely above the surface of the Bay but on solid ground. Lying down in the distance, so far away that our camera struggled with the distance to get us a good picture. But this was it. This is what we came to see. Surely this would not be the only bear we'd find on our last day. A small thrill? Yep that about sums it up. Feeling vindicated but the bear didn't even stand up for crying out loud. We moved on in hopes of more.

We got it. But we'd have to wait about an hour and a half. And this one was running. Away from us. Fast. Possibly spooked by the giant rectangular white box with a bunch of excited humans inside. These bears can move and those strong back legs can power these big bodies across the landscape pretty rapidly. Once it had run a while, it turned, stood in profile and looked out and back towards our big white box long enough for me to take the picture below.

Two and a half hours. Two very distant white bears. That's about half our time gone.

Polar bear number three. Churchill Wildlife Management Area. 

The next sightings would be thrilling.

We'd end up with six polar bear sightings in our time in Churchill: one at that first safety briefing just by Miss Piggy and five more in the Wildlife Management Area. We haven't spent a lot of time in our lives looking for bears but we've done a few days here and there. Five in one day equals our best day ever in Sequoia National Park in California and six in one trip equals our best trip ever in Alaska. While that may not seem like a ton of bears on a vacation or even a day, we'll take it. If (and here's the catch) those are quality bear sightings.

Our afternoon bear sightings on our last day in Churchill definitely were of a higher quality. And they were polar bears which are rarer and take way more work than grizzlies or black bears. Polar bears are better. This was our best bear day ever.

One of the great things about the sequence of bear sightings we got on that last day is the bears we found were progressively closer to us which meant that each one gave us more to look at. You can see the difference in bear size between the two photographs above which stretched the zoom on our camera. Bear number two is definitely closer than bear number one.

Bear number six (the closest bear) is below. Now we are talking!

A few thoughts about bear number six. 

First, the view was terrific. This was a bear sighting we could take in without the use of the zoom lens on the camera, although we did that anyway. This was the best appreciation we would have of the size of a typical polar bear. This is a thick, muscled animal that you do not want to tangle with. I love the face as he's looking right over to our big white box on wheels.

Second, while we didn't intend to chase him away with our noise and extra large vehicle, we surely did in the end. We fully meant to just watch and take it all in and then leave the bear for someone else to discover (although I'm not sure there was anyone else out that day) but that didn't happen. The bear striding from his original spot again emphasized just how massive these bears are.

And third, the fact that this bear turned and yawned got us a great look at his signature long neck and massive jaws. This bear's mouth is gigantic. I guess it has to be because that's how he's going to capture seals when they surface at breathing time. The jaw has to be big enough to grab a full grown seal and pull it out of the water. 

Polar bears are generally solitary creatures. There's no hanging out as a family unit sipping a bottle or two of Coke at Christmas. The only time they really hang out with fellow polar bears is during mating season (which is NOT August) and if a mother is raising a cub or cubs. And that last one is why bear number six was our second best bear sighting.

Say hi to our mom and cub. Mom is on the right. The cub, which admittedly is not that much smaller than mom herself, is on the left. Mom is likely five plus years old. Her cub is likely about eight months old. The size similarity is more noticeable in the pictures below. Our guides for the day guessed that the cub is male, which explains the relatively similar bulk.

We spent about 10 minutes watching bear number six. We got about twice that long with our bear family duo, including a walk from where we first noticed them to a spot nearby to get a snack (likely of berries) before disappearing into the tundra greenery. And I really do mean disappearing. Once they had walked a bit into the fireweed and other stunted growths on top of the ground, you really couldn't see them at all. This is a big part of why they are so dangerous. Despite their size and their completely white fur, somehow they are about invisible even when there is no snow.

Cub leaves and mom follows.

Based on our wildlife watching experiences over the last 10 or so years, we've always been most satisfied with our looks at mammals or other creatures when there is some social interaction. One bear doesn't do that for us. And while we didn't get an extensive look at these two bears engaged with one another, the little bumps and nudges that they engaged in made a difference. It made it look like these two were in it together for each other and it was not just an every bear for him or herself situation like the others we saw. I like to think there was genuine affection and love exchanged between these two. Maybe I'm anthropomorphizing a bit much there. It was a privilege to follow these two for a bit more than a quarter of an hour.

One thing that I found remarkable about all five bears we found in the Wildlife Management Area was that they all knew we were there. They all looked straight at us for a while with the exception of our second bear that day (identified in this post as bear number three) who just took off running. Maybe it's stupid to note that an animal that uses its senses to survive in one of the harshest environments on Earth can notice a large vehicle that looks nothing like anything else for miles around. But it wasn't just the odd glance. The humans were to be watched and tracked and if we got too threatening, the bear was gone. Size matters. Big creatures don't like things bigger than them.

Before we arrived in Churchill, we'd seen pictures of polar bears walking right up to Tundra Buggies, putting their paws as high on the vehicle as possible and looking up at the humans looking down at them. I am sure that would have been incredible to see and hear and smell. That's not what we got. We'll have to be satisfied with what we found in 2026. And you know what? We didn't find nothing and we are satisfied. We got what we came for.

Single species wildlife watching trips are difficult. If you don't get that one thing you came to see, you are bound to be disappointed. We've never based a whole trip around one type of animal. We've had days where we were looking for one and only one bird or animal, but not a whole vacation. And to be frank, this wasn't a polar bear or bust trip; we actually did have other things we wanted to see that we felt pretty darned secure that we would see. But if we hadn't seen a polar bear in Churchill, this would have been a bust. There's no question about that. We left town knowing that wasn't the case and that felt good, even if we didn't get to smell polar bear breath because they were so tantalizingly close.

Polar bears are now added to our life list. They are proudly on that list with elephants and lions and kiwis and wolves and humpback whales and toucans and hippos and painted dogs and shoebills (definitely a one species day there) and a lot of other things.

Lots of big white butts and lots of looks over at the big white vehicle.

I don't know when the next time is that we will see an iconic animal in the wild for the first time. We certainly don't have the trip already scheduled or even penciled in right now. But when we get there, no matter what species of mammal, bird, reptile or whatever else it is we are looking for, that first sighting will be magical and thrilling, just like seeing our first polar bear was right after being scared to death by our "run as fast as you can" safety briefing.

This trip for us covered everywhere from Winnipeg to Churchill and back to Winnipeg with a couple of spots in between. The undisputed highlight of the trip was Churchill and the undisputed highlight of our time in Churchill was our time in the the Wildlife Management Area close to but really very far away from a number of large white bears. 

My favorite picture of the day is the one at the end of this post. It's the little head touch from the mom with the closed eyes on the back of her fast growing offspring. These two will stick with me.

The cover picture of this post is a soapstone sculpture called Circumpolar Mother and Cub by Abraham Anghik Ruben, an Inuvialuk Canadian sculptor. We found this work alongside a number of other similar sculptures by the same artist in the Winnipeg Art Gallery in downtown Winnipeg on the first full day of our trip. Maybe this was really the first polar bear we saw on this trip. Or maybe it was just a good luck omen. Anyway, it seemed appropriate to add to this post.

Dandelion

No those aren't dandelions. They are buffalo berries. In Kootenay National Park. This post eventually will discuss a dandelion or two. Just bear with me on that one for a little bit. Be patient. We'll get there.

Of the six Parks Canada National Parks we visited in Alberta and British Columbia this summer, Kootenay National Park was our favorite. I feel confident making that statement and if our agenda had gone a little differently, I can confidently say that I could have totally seen things going an alternate way. Not that we were looking to necessarily anoint a favorite park from our week in Canada or anything. And not that everything we did in five full days in the Canadian Rockies wasn't just incredible to make us fall madly in love with the area generally. But Kootenay was for sure the best. 

Besides the amazing mountains and gorgeous water we saw in pretty much every park, Kootenay beat out its neighbors for two reasons: (1) it was the only Park in which we hiked (like, seriously hiked; not walking from a parking lot along a paved path to an overlook or something) and (2) well, that's the dandelion part of the story.

I like hiking. Like once per vacation like hiking. I don't need to do it a lot. Just like once in a week's vacation. The hike in Kootenay by the way...incredible. But we'll get to that. And sooner than we'll get to the dandelions. I promise.

Kootenay National Park. The view from the trailhead.

But first...some history. Not real history. History from this blog.

The last time we hiked in a National Park, it was in California's Sequoia National Park just about two years ago before we set off for Canada. We did an early morning walk on what we assumed would be a well-traveled and busy trail and what we hoped would get us some sightings of a black bear or two. The second part came true. We saw three different black bears pretty close to us while we walked. But it wasn't on a trail packed with people. In fact, we didn't see anyone else the whole of that morning walk. So effectively, we were alone with no cell service on a trail with bears nearby and no bear spray on hand. Not too smart, right? Nothing bad happened or even came close to happening but still...not too smart.

We were determined that if we hiked in Canada (and I really wanted to in a low impact way) that we were NOT going to hike around bears alone without bear spray. So rather than wing it and do things alone like we did in Cali in 2023, we looked for an organized, guided hike to shepherd us along in bear country. And if you believe the signs like pretty much everywhere we traveled west of Calgary this year, the whole place is bear country. Fortunately for us, Parks Canada has a few guided hike options.

We picked something called the Stanley Glacier hike, which sounds like it's a hike to a glacier but it's totally not. Apparently, the area around Kootenay and Yoho National Parks is rich in more than just mountains, lakes, rivers and wildlife. And if you look in the right spots, there are also a ton of fossils just lying around on the ground. I like fossils and I really like the "relatively easy" description of the trail on the website. Fossils, and not the glacier named after the same dude that the Stanley Cup is named after, are the feature of the Stanley Glacier Hike. I'm all in! Sign us up!

At the Stanley Glacier hike trailhead. Snowshoe hare. Prettier in winter when they are all white.

So we are at the trailhead at 7:30 am on a crisp Sunday late June morning (if I'm remembering right we are talking high 40s / low 50s as a temperature) ready to go with our guide for the day Steve, a dude with a business degree who just figured it would fit him a whole lot better if he spent a lot more time in the great outdoors than behind a desk doing what he was educated to do. I totally respect that.

I'll say a few words about this Steve guy in a paragraph or two but the first thing he says to us (after we signed the waiver form, of course) is that (and I'm paraphrasing here) there's pretty much no way you will see a bear on this hike. Bear country? Yes! Bears on this hike in late June before the buffalo berries and all other kinds of berries are available for easy eating trail-side? No. Not a chance.

That's OK. We didn't take this hike to see bears. We took this guided hike in the hope that we'd find a fossil or two and so that in the event we came across a bear, we'd either have a critical mass to scare it or them away or if we faced a rush attack from a whole pack of bears, maybe there would be someone in the group slower than us. 

Kidding about the last thing. Probably. I mean when do bears hunt in a pack?

Steve.

So we are off. On a scheduled seven hour hike through not-right-now-bear country to go find some fossils. Maybe. Steve promises we'll take it slow and easy and stop a lot on the way there (or uphill) to learn about the kinds of creatures we might see in fossil form. I really want to find some fossils.

The hike is an interactive experience. There's learning on the way and we were encouraged to rotate who walked directly behind Steve so that he'd have a chance to interact with everyone in the group. This, as it turns out, would benefit both us and Steve. That Clark's nutcracker story I posted on my Banff post? Got that from Steve. 

Maybe 30 minutes or so into the walk, we started learning. We were each randomly assigned a fossil in photograph form on one rest stop; were then challenged to match them to an artist's rendering of what the creature or organism might have looked like on another rest stop; and then spent some time putting the whole cast of creatures in food chain order on a pee and rest break after that. Peeing in the woods.

I got something very unexciting with my fossil here. In my defense, the selection of our assigned photographs of fossils was completely blind. But it was made known pretty early that I picked (or was randomly assigned) the bottom of the food chain plant species. Did that kill the experience for me? Absolutely not. But it did allow me to guess where I fell when we got to the food chain exercise. I aced that stop!

Marpolia spissa. Bottom of the food chain. Oh yeah! That's totally me.

A couple of things before we get to how amazing this hike was.

First, let's clarify what we are looking for here. These are not fossils like the dinosaur fossils we looked for and barely (and I do mean barely) found in Utah five years ago. We are talking much more primitive life than that. See the marpolia fossil and artist's rendering above? That's the kind of thing we are seeking out. Although maybe a little more complex than the marpolia since I did, you know, have the bottom of the food chain organism assigned to me.

Time-wise, we are talking about 506 million years ago (dinosaurs, for perspective, date back as far as about 250 million years) in the Cambrian Era. Before internal skeletons. Before life on land. Before any sort of living creature was more than like a foot in length. And did they look like the artists' renderings we were provided with to illustrate our assigned fossils? Who knows. Apparently it's mostly a guess based on what current sea creatures look like. If there's any frame of reference that I can offer for what we were looking for (other than the marpolia), if you know what a trilobite was, maybe that tells you a little about what we were hoping to find somewhere in the Canadian Rockies in fossil form that day.

Second, let's spend a paragraph or so talking about this Steve guy. In the pantheon of most incredible tour guides on any continent addressing any subject whatsoever, Steve has to be pretty high up that list. In addition to pointing out buffalo berries and telling us bears can eat 200,000 berries per day AND proudly ditching business for the outdoors AND giving us the Clark's nutcracker story AND leading the whole group safely there and back again AND making connections with everyone on the hike AND telling us all about the creatures that became the fossils we were seeking, he also managed to describe to us why the Canadian and American Rocky Mountains are different AND put our existence and mass extinctions and climate change into perspective. How's that for a day hike? Certainly one of the best ever. Well done!

Food chain. Mine is at the very far right.

As I've already mentioned, this is not the first time we have looked for fossils. We haven't spent seven hours in the mountains walking to a place where there might be fossils but it's not our first rodeo here (although it may be our second). If we learned anything from the first time (again...Utah 2020) it's that not everything that dies becomes a fossil. It really takes a pretty specific set of circumstances to bury living organisms in the perfect kind of conditions to preserve them in an airless environment for thousands or millions of years.

And that is exactly what happened here in Kootenay. I guess modern science (which I believe; I do believe in science) has figured out that the organisms from all those millions of years ago that we were hoping to discover this past June were the victims of a sudden underwater silt avalanche that buried everything in its path. But not just some silt avalanche. One with particles so fine to enter any any body cavities and expel any damaging-to-preservation chemicals or compounds thus yielding a treasure trove of well-preserved fossils. 

Sound farfetched? It didn't to me. We got the same story around Dinosaur National Monument five years ago. Unusual climactic conditions. Natural event that concentrated and buried a number of (in that case) skeletons in one spot. No dying on the surface of the Earth and letting the creatures and the elements take the bodily remains. That's not how fossils get formed.

In the Rockies, all these fossils got preserved in a layer of shale, loose rock that breaks apart super easily and keeps basically falling down the mountain-sides as the land moves and people climb over it. You can actually see the band within the bare mountains where this loose rock is from. I would not want to be climbing on those faces, if I were ever inclined to do any vertical face mountain climbing. Which of course, I'm not.

Now...about that "relatively easy" hike. I guess that was true. There was some truth in advertising here. We certainly made it there and back and were never in real danger of dying or being seriously injured and we only had maybe one or two minor falls (and not us; the group as a whole). We also never really felt seriously out of breath or were exhausted or couldn't go on or needed airlifting out of there or anything like that. But it was challenging in spots, particularly traversing over a bunch of loose shale and just for me personally descending on any sort of rocky slope in general just makes me feel like my knees are constantly in danger of buckling. 

But this experience was worth it. So worth it. I know I've already raved in past posts from this trip about how gorgeous these mountains and the trees and rivers that come with them are from the driver's or passenger seat of a car. Try being in the middle of all that walking on your own two feet. Close to those trees. Seeing the mountains move as you walk closer and closer to them and the glaciers on top of them. Walking over and past and close to the rivers and streams and rapids and churning water.  Hearing (but not seeing; oh no not seeing) the many different kinds of warblers that summer up in the Canadian Rockies. Breathing that crisp clean air. Worth it.

Kootenay National Park. The shale is in the pale brown-yellow layer about halfway up the mountain on the left.

Know what else was worth it? Finding a fossil. 

We were told before we descended and then scoured the pile of shale in the valley at the farthest point of our hike that we were likely to find some fossils already placed on some of the larger boulders before us. That was great. We didn't understand how big or small these things were but at least we were likely to find something to look at. 

We were also told that near the largest boulder in the shale field there was a locker with some of the largest and most spectacular fossils found near where we were about to search. That was even better. Not only would we find something, we would find something pretty incredible. The "largest boulder" by the way looked like about four feet tall from the spot where we were told about all this. It turned out to be massive. Like probably 12 feet tall. Distance. What it does to your perspective...

So knowing that there are guaranteed fossils out there for me to see, I am of course not interested in any of those already found ones left by others and certainly not interested in those gorgeous amazing specimens in the locker. Oh no. I wanted to find one for myself that nobody else had ever flipped over a piece of shale and seen.

Did that happen? I have absolutely no idea. But pretty quickly (and I should absolutely note that remote from any of the guaranteed spots that we'd find fossils already laid out for us to see), I found one. Less than five minutes into the shale pile, I found a tiny little trilobite on a piece of yellow-ish shale. This thing was alive over 500 million years ago and is now perfectly preserved based on some freak accident of nature and on a Sunday afternoon in June in Canada, I was able to look at it in about perfect form. What kind of a wonderful world do we live in where I can do that?

Fossils: "Mine" (top) and something a bit more impressive (bottom).

So that covers the first thing that made Kootenay National Park the best Park of the trip. Now let's get to the dandelions.

The day after our fossil hike, we went back to Kootenay. We spent a couple of hours kayaking on the Columbia River near Radium Hot Springs near the southern entrance to Kootenay. We figured we'd drive through the Park and see what the other parts of the place would hold for us. In particular, Kootenay was our great hope for multiple species of large mammals. Grizzlies. Black bears. Moose. Elk. Sheep. Goats.

Most of what we did on our drive through Kootenay that day was to stop at random spots and look. We saw amazing landscapes and pretty much no wildlife on these stops and that was a theme throughout the day. And the whole trip in general, really.

But right after we entered the Park we found ourselves driving towards a gorgeous green lake on the right hand side of the road called Olive Lake. We had to stop and look. It looked that inviting. So we pulled into the turn lane, noticed very briefly that there were some people out of their car ahead of us looking right towards us and then looked to the right...black bear. Pull over. Put the car in park. And watch.

I have seen black bears in the wild before. Mount Rainier. Vermont. Maybe somewhere on I-81 in the middle of Pennsylvania. Grand Teton. And of course Sequoia National Park on foot without any bear spray. But I have never, ever been ten feet from a black bear in a car just watching him (or her, but most likely him) for 15 or 20 minutes just doing what he was doing which was pretty much being a bear in Canada and eating...you guessed it...dandelions.

For some sort of perspective here, the two photographs above were taken with my iPhone. It's an iPhone 15 Pro so it's a pretty good camera but it's still pretty limited when it comes right down to it from a zoom perspective. We were that close. Admittedly, I did hop out of the driver's seat and get into the back seat and drop the back seat window to get even closer. The view was that crystal clear. We were so close. We could hear this bear crunching on the dandelions, if that even seems possible. What a huge privilege to be able to do this. 

If there is a great time to look for bears, it's first thing in the morning or maybe towards the end of the day. This bear was out munching on dandelions at about 1 in the afternoon. We appreciate how lucky we were here. We also appreciate the quality and length of our time just a few feet from this bear. Particularly considering we wouldn't get anywhere near this close to any animal that didn't have wings or wasn't a golden-mantled ground squirrel in the rest of our time in the Canadian Rockies.

So super lucky. 

Bear close ups. NOT from the iPhone.

So apparently bears and dandelions are a thing. We mentioned this encounter to a Park ranger later in the week and he told us that bears love dandelions at this time of year considering there are no berries available for easy eating. Who knew?

We saw. We watched. We moved on. It would never be better all week from a creature spotting standpoint.

With nature, you can't always get what you want. We've learned that on pretty much every continent we've visited. I am sure we can count a disappointment in a lot of places that we have traveled over the past 12 years. We hope for quantity and quality of experiences in nature wherever we go but one small moment of quality can outweigh all the quantity we had hoped for, For me, Kootenay delivered on both. So, sure, the quantity of wildlife sightings was very disappointing but this was the best bear sighting for me ever and seven hours walking through Kootenay were in no way any sort of disappointment. 

Best park winner, Canada 2025. Kootenay. Against super strong competition, this place was still the best we had.

Bear!

For the first couple of years that I was writing this blog, the focus of our travels was primarily city-based. You know...museums, food, notable buildings, history, sports, that sort of stuff. Things that are related to human beings and the settlements they create and things they spend their time doing. We spent lots of time in Europe, visited Morocco to check Africa off the continents list and hit some cities in the United States. Sure, we dipped our toes into nature a bit by walking on a glacier in Iceland and exploring Everglades National Park in Florida but we spent most of our time on asphalt and concrete and not so much in the natural world.

Then we visited Southern Africa in August of 2015 and our travel plans started to shift. It seems like at least half or maybe more of the time we've spent on the road since that trip has been spent outdoors. Hiking or driving in jaw-dropping natural places or chasing wildlife have become some of our favorite things to do. Our California trip in late June this year was a bit of both of those travel styles for us: some time eating and wining in the Napa and Sonoma Valleys preceded by some time immersed in the great outdoors in Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.

As we do every time we head into a National Park out west, we hoped we'd see some wildlife being genuinely wild, but we knew in the three parks we picked to visit that our options would be more limited than some of the other parks we've visited on the left side of the Mississippi River. These parks are not stocked with elk or bison or moose like Yellowstone or Grand Teton or Rocky Mountain. There are also no grizzly bears or wolves roaming the Parks' real estate. Yes, there is a grizzly bear on the California state flag but it's been over a century since there's been a grizzly seen in California.

That meant we'd be hoping for birds, bighorn sheep, mountain goats and black bears. We thought it unlikely we'd find any sheep or goats in the Sierra Nevadas and the birds that are resident in the parks didn't excite us overly much. So we pinned all our hopes on bears. Yep, we were relying on the animals that we barely saw in previous travels in Colorado and Wyoming and Montana to make this trip an animals trip. We are fools, I know.

We got so lucky.

If you had asked me before I started planning this trip where I thought I was mostly likely to see a bear, I would have said Yosemite. I mean, have you seen the old black and white movies from the '50s and '60s of people feeding bears from the windows of their cars in Yosemite? While I didn't figure there would be rampant, unabashed hand-feeding of bears, I figured maybe there would be some around. Yosemite seemed to be the place for bears. Sequoia is just about big trees, isn't it? And honestly, I'd never even heard of Kings Canyon until I started mapping out the trip. 

It had to be Yosemite that we'd see the bears, right? Right?

We didn't see any bears in Yosemite. There are bears in Yosemite National Park. Somewhere. As there are in Sequoia and Kings Canyon. We just didn't see any in Yosemite. In fact, after researching all three parks and planning the route for this trip, we actually planned on coming up empty in Yosemite. It just didn't seem like there would be any spot that we'd be visiting that stood any sort of halfway decent chance of seeing a bear.

The bears park on this trip (post-planning) was supposed to be Kings Canyon. It sounded to us like Zumwalt Meadow at the very eastern part of the Park would be the ideal place to head first thing in the morning and with a handful (but not too many) of other early bird tourists, we might spot a bear or two foraging for berries or grubs or whatever in some gorgeous Sierra Nevada Mountain meadow, lush and green from the winter and spring snow and rains. It sounded like an idyllic picture postcard view of nature and one of America's greatest alpha predators.

Crescent Meadow, Sequoia National Park.

Zumwalt Meadow was closed. So was most all of Kings Canyon National Park. The winter of 2023 was brutal in the Sierra Nevadas in terms of rain and snowfall and the after effects of all that water included a few roads here and there being out of commission when we were hanging around California in late June. No bears in Yosemite. No bears in Kings Canyon either. We were left with Sequoia for the bears.

Can I say how unbelievably gorgeous Sequoia National Park is? We went to Sequoia to see those trees that have leant their name to the Park but there are some spots of supreme beauty in that place that aren't defined by sequoia trees. Those picture-perfect meadows that I imagined at the end of the main road running down the middle of Kings Canyon? They exist. I don't know whether they exist in Kings Canyon but for sure they exist in Sequoia. They are just amazingly peaceful, bucolic canvases. And when they are flush with snowmelt, the grass is so green in the morning sun. They truly are amazing. I cannot recall being in a place much more gorgeous and I'm not being melodramatic here.

When we found out Kings Canyon was effectively shut down, we had to find an alternate Zumwalt Meadow in Sequoia National Park. We picked Crescent Meadow. It sounded like an adequate substitute. Meadow. Mountains. Trees. Remote. End of the road in a National Park. Rather than setting off first thing in the morning for Zumwalt, we'd head to Crescent Meadow. We figured we'd get there at about eight and grab one of the few spots in the parking lot near the Crescent Meadow loop trail and set off for a walk with very few other (but enough to provide a lifeline in case of an up close bear encounter) people to see if we could find a bear. And if not, it would be a good walk anyway.

The Crescent Meadow loop trail sounded perfect by the way for a morning hike. Flat, rated "easy" by the Park, 1.6 miles and a loop, which meant that we'd only get so far away (0.8 miles in fact) from the parking lot. Effectively after we got halfway through the hike, we'd be getting closer to the car with every step.

We got to the Crescent Meadow parking lot at about 8 a.m. after leaving our hotel about 2-1/2 hours before that. We got one of the last spots (so lucky), grabbed our water bottles and camera and looked for the trailhead. Crescent Meadow loop signs pointed both left and right. We picked right. It looked greener and we'd been heading in that direction already.

So we are not 10 minutes into our walk and we see a bear. We honestly thought there was no way we'd see one and less than a quarter of an hour since we left the car and started walking, we saw a young black bear foraging in the sunlight at Crescent Meadow. Are you kidding me? This was fantastic. How lucky were we? We thought the chances of seeing one of these animals was super remote and about the moment we left our vehicle we find one. So lucky! We watched him or her move across the Meadow at a leisurely pace before disappearing from our view. So good. We are strong believers in getting up early to see wildlife and it for sure paid off in 2023 in Sequoia.

Our first bear of the trip is shown in the two pictures above. He (or she) looks mostly black in color, although the sun makes the fur in the back look a little light brown. Could be the light or it could be just a patch of brown fur. Black bears are not always black. They can be all sorts of shades of brown or even blond. It was a black bear for sure because the only bears in the park are black bears so there's really no debate to be had here. 

It is so special to see wildlife in the true wild. This bear was amazing. This had to be a good omen. Plus it was small, so in the unlikely event that it had come near us and attacked us (don't laugh!), I think we could have taken him. Or her. We watched it move out of sight and decided to move on.

The Crescent Meadow loop trail runs around its namesake meadow before heading into the woods. We kept going and going until we felt pretty sure we had traversed all 1.6 miles and should be getting back to the car. Only...no car. No car park either. No nothing. End of trail. I thought this thing was supposed to be a loop? 

I don't know if we did something wrong or what. It didn't look to me like we missed any sort of turn. So we did what (I feel) anyone would do in a strange place with no cell signal: we turned around and started walking back. We thought we were done and would be on the road again. Didn't happen. Now we had about a mile and half hike back the way we came. My estimate. Could have been less but I don't feel it was.

And that's when we saw the two bears.

Bear number three, Crescent Meadow loop trail, Sequoia National Park.

I haven't spent a whole lot of time hiking in bear country. I've found myself off in the woods or on a trail a couple of times in my life in spots where bears might live or be knowing really pretty well that the chances are super remote I'd actually see a bear. But seeing two of them just a few hundred feet away moving through a meadow at some speed was a bit unnerving. I mean here we are by ourselves (where the heck were all those people who had parked in the parking lot???) in the middle of nowhere with no cell service and no bear spray and with two bears within sight. And they did not look small. I'm not sure we could have taken one of these bears, let alone two.

To make things worse, we are now moving away from the two bears back along the trail we walked to get to the dead end that was supposed to be the end of the loop. You aren't supposed to turn your back on bears and move away, right? Isn't that just like running? I have to admit I was shaking at first. It was a little difficult to focus the camera zoom on these animals when we first spotted them. This is some next level, what-the-heck-do-we-do-here type stuff. I mean, what do we actually do here? Other than move away back along the trail and hope we weren't noticed.

And yes, despite the shock of seeing two pretty good sized bears with nobody else around a nothing but nature between us and them, I still kept taking pictures. Why would I not? I have to blog about this, after all.

Still...pretty nervous on this one.

We were fine. Of course we were. Everything was absolutely fine. They either didn't see us or didn't smell us or just didn't care. And we weren't stupid enough to do something like bring a turkey sandwich or something like that on the hike with us. We walked around the trail back to the car and moved on. Nothing to see here, folks. But it got the blood flowing first thing in the morning for sure. I have never been in this situation before and I'm honestly glad we saw these three bears, including the last two. It's now a treasured experience despite the nervousness on first sight. Now I can say I've seen a bear in the wild pretty close to me with nothing between me and it. That's more than I could say in May of 2023.

Bear number two running (top) and bear number three (bottom), Crescent Meadow loop trail.

As a signature bear experience for this trip, what we saw on Crescent Meadow loop was just fine with me. Sure, a better bear encounter would have been stopping a bear charge by making myself look big and ferocious and have the bear walk away looking defeated, but I was really very much OK with this experience. Plus that other scenario has way more of a chance of going seriously wrong. Three bears in one hike? I couldn't have hoped for anything more. Really. This is as many bears as we saw in a full day in Rocky Mountain National Park in June of 2020 and one more bear than we saw in six days in Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks later that same year. And all this took place in the first two hours we were in the park. 

Early bird. Worm. That's all I really have to say here.

But we weren't done with the bears.

If there was a meeting with a bear that I'd hoped to have in California last month, it was exactly what we had at Big Trees trail later the same day in Sequoia. Gorgeous green meadow, lone bear moving very slowly through the grass looking for food and enough people around to feel like there was no danger whatsoever. That's exactly what happened. The Big Trees trail was one of the highlights of our trip to Sequoia because it got us a great look at a variety of good-sized giant sequoias. The bear was just a bonus.

And the enough people around to feel like there was no danger is an important factor. Not that it was really needed. Hey, I like security blankets, what can I say? Either that or all I really need to do is run faster than the slowest person, right? 

We lingered on the Big Trees trail for maybe 20 minutes watching this lone bear root around for whatever he was interested in near a smallish non-sequoia tree. There was not a whole lot of action. Not like the two bears running we saw earlier in the day. And that was fine. This was the last bear we'd see in Sequoia. Right before we saw this one, we found another jet black bear in the woods just maybe 50 yards off the Big Trees trail, but he split before we could get a picture.

Wild animals are difficult and unpredictable. You can plan and plan and plan all you want but there's no guarantee that a bear or moose or elephant or some sort of bird or any other living creature is going to cooperate and show up and stand still enough and pose so you can get some signature shot to put on your wall or add to a blog post or just throw on your hard drive and have it never see the light of day ever again. We've had some disappointing wildlife days. Sequoia National Park in 2023 was not one of those. Although it really was supposed to be Kings Canyon. Good thing it was closed. Sometimes being prepared and having backup plans gets you the result you want anyway. It sure did for us in California this year.

Two last bear pictures. Big Trees trail, Sequoia National Park.