I learned the next day that I was not the only one that had crossed paths with a bear. Dick told us about his harrowing experience from the previous night.

He got out his new salt gun and began searching for the source of the intruder. He soon isolated the sound to a point in the rafters above the stove.

I saw a big brown hind end of what at first I thought was an elk, about 75 yards away. I was standing behind a large tree and stopped and peeked around the tree to see what it was.

He could tell that the top part just slid partway down over the bottom half. So, he tried to twist it apart with his hands. No go!

As I laid in my Jeep and tried to get some rest, I began to realize how tired I was. I felt like a little kid who walked around Disneyland for 12 hours with his parents.

It all occurred when Gus and I returned to a remote placer gold area where we had previously found really good gold. The problem was that it would take about an hour to walk through the desert to get to it.