It was our third backpacking drill for Grand Canyon hiking trip this Sep.

Janet and I went to Yosemite backpacking trip last weekend on Glen Aulin trail in Yosemite National Park. We knew it is a bear country, but never imagined the thread is that real.

After seeing the sunset painting the California falls into golden veil, we hiked back to our campsite almost in the dark. We started cooking our dinner on our stove as soon as we got back. Two hungry souls were waiting forever for the dinner to be ready. I was joking with Janet that the chicken soup smelled so good that would attract the hungry hiker from miles away to ask for a share. But this time, the good soup attracted something else.

While we were enjoying our dinner, I heard some bush moving behind Janet. When I shined my flashlight into the bush, I saw two light balls shined back in dark from less than 10 feet away right behind Janet's back. From the distance of the eyeballs, my instants told me that it was belonged to something big. I jumped up from my stone chair and yelled 'Holly shit'. By seeing how high of my jump and the way my light shined, Janet realized that something was wrong. She stood up with her dinner in her hand and looked back over her shoulder. It was a huge bear at least 500 pound wondering toward our dinner under the bright moonlight. At that mighty faction of a second, more than ten ways of different defends went through my mind. However, it was Janet's scream that stopped the bear. It swings its head for few times and decided to walk away from these two crazy creatures who were jumping and yelling 'go away' loudly. It left slowly with manner though.

Our noise woke up the single hiker who slept in a sleeping bag without a tent near us. He told us that the bear tended to come back to the same place. We went through our tent few times to make sure we put all our food, tooth paste, sunscream and any thing that smells into the bear box. Except two of us who are too big to fit in.

After carrying the backpack for a whole day hike, I was so tired that I fell into sleep right away. I was so deep into sleep, suddenly I felt something was shaking me and I heard 'Bear'. I suddenly sat up from my sleep bag and the speed was so fast that Janet thought I was attacked by bear. She began to scream, and so did I. We could not see anything at all from our tent which was all zipped up tight. I saw the flash light shined by the lonely hiker. He mumbled something and then all back into darkness and quite. There was not slightly movement, not even the tree leaves. It was so quite.

Janet told me she never heard me screaming like that. I asked Janet what's going on. She told me she heard some heavy foot steps and asked me: 'Is it a bear?' But what I have heard is the last word. Thinking about the poor guy who have been woke up suddenly at night by our screaming, we could not help laughing until our tears came out. After that, I took our waking stick into our tent and I could not sleep that well until the sunlight came up.