Flathead Lake Lodge

This is a little story about a bear getting into the tent at kids camp at the Lodge when we used to take the kids up on the mountain. The kids, maybe eight to twelve years old, would camp out for the night to get them a little outdoor experience.

So this particular night got a little scary in that the kids were transported in two vehicles with two counselors, both being girls. And they were up at camp telling bear stories and scary stories around the campfire. And the kids eventually climbed into their sleeping bags and went to sleep.

The counselors were just sitting around the fire when they heard this chomp, chomp, chomp! When a bear is upset it’ll actually snap its teeth. A bear came up behind the counselors’ camp and fire, they kind of spooked the bear back and jumped in the vehicles, turned the lights on, started the engine and hollered for all the kids to wake up and get in the cars.

And all the kids jumped up and got in the vehicles, and then they came back down off the mountain pretty quickly. And of course, all the parents back at the lodge were in the Saddlesore Saloon kind of having a pretty good time because all the kids were gone for the night on their mountain campout.

When the kids came charging in the door you could tell something had happened because their eyes were bulging. They were so excited to tell their parents that they saw a bear! So anyway, there was a lot of laughter, and plenty of excitement.

One Short

Not long after a dad came up to me. He was from Brazil and he said MY SON IS MISSING? We got to checking,  with the two vehicles and all the excitement, the counselors had not cross counted the campers. They weren’t sure? They just assumed all the kids were in the vehicles.

And sure enough, we were short one little person.

The father went with me, and we went outside and jumped in an old truck sitting there and fortunately it had a rifle in it. I always carry a gun in my truck or a pistol or two.

We headed up to the mountain, which was about two miles. And I was in a bit of a hurry going up the mountain road. We hit a bump so hard it knocked the muffler off the truck. Now this truck is just roaring, we pulled up into the camp and I swung around using the lights to kind of wash the whole camp to see what was there. The bear had its body about halfway inside one of the tents. The bear didn’t really give up his ground that much, but he stepped back and I took the rifle and took a couple shots to scare him. The bear ran off into the brush line and stood his ground. He wouldn’t back away.

I wasn’t going to shoot the bear, and as long as he was standing over there, I knew we were okay.

Sound Asleep

So in the meantime, while I was watching and guarding the bear, the father went into the tent and started throwing sleeping bags everywhere as the father naturally was in a bit of a panic. I’m not sure I might admit to him that I was in some sort of accelerated state as well.

All of a sudden, the father hollered, here he is!

The child was sound asleep under the sleeping bags. He had slept through the counselors screaming, the load muffler and through my gunshots. He obviously had a pretty busy exhausting day at the ranch.

We put him in the vehicle and took off down the mountain roaring from our mufferless truck. We got back to the Lodge and everything was quite fine.

It made a good bear story.

Over all the years, I’m always telling stories at the ranch around the fireplace and my son, Chase, is always going, “Oh dad, you’re just making that story up.” And Chase kind of chides me a little bit that the stories aren’t true.

Last summer in about July, Chase and I are in the lobby and Jodi comes out with a printed email and said, what do you want to do about this?

Jodi’s has been our office manager of forty plus years, I believe this year is 42.

She shows me the email and it’s asking if any of the Averills still at the Lodge? And it said, if they are, they won’t remember my name, but they’ll probably remember this incident. When I was a kid, I got left at my tent at the kids’ camp and a bear was getting into our tent when Doug and my dad came up and chased the bear off and saved me from getting eaten.

The email went on and on and at the end he said Doug felt so bad about this incident he offered my dad a free vacation if he ever comes back to the Lodge. He wrote that his dad never made it, but if the offer still stands, he’d like to come back for a free vacation?!!

It was a really a cute letter, so we sent him a return email back and it said…..for heaven’s sakes, come on, we’ll give you a free vacation after almost forty years!

And Chase goes, “Dad, you finally got the story straight.”

In the email, he told the story exactly the way I’ve been telling them about the, the kids, jumping in the cars, leaving him there asleep and the muffler falling off the truck and the gun shots towards the bear.

So anyway, just another one of the bear stories at the Lodge and ranch.

There’s many of them.