How to get a bear out of your car:

[Marthe48]

4. I turned 5 on a family vacation Out West

It was my Mom, Grandmother, 3 brothers, my sister and me. In a 1957 Chevy Nomad wagon. My Dad stayed home and minded the store, bless his heart The plan was to drive from Ohio to St. Louis and then north to see Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone, and other sights, then drive south to see our relatives in New Mexico.

We drove through Yellowstone. We had a sunny day, and there was a line of cars in front of us, and cars behind. Traffic stopped because a mother bear with 2 cubs had stopped cars, and a car about 3 ahead of ours was tossing food out to the momma bear. We had a picnic hamper in our car, and my Mom decided to try to get the bears to move away from the stopped car, so we could move forward. She had one of my brothers hand her some bologna, and got out of the car, leaving the door open, and waving a few slices of bologna at the bear, who immediately dropped on all fours from the car she was at, and barrelling toward my mom, who threw the bologna at the bear and jumped in our car and got the door shut. Thank God, the bear stopped to eat the bologna, or this wouldn't be a happy story. The momma bear and her cubs came to our car, looking for more handouts. I remembered sitting in the middle of the back seat, leaning over the front and watching my Gram give the cubs Lifesavers, through a tiny opening in the window. We still had to wait to move, until the bears moved on. I didn't think a lot of it then, but as I grew up, I was like, who does that?

But wait, there's more. I don't know if we had reserved a cabin in Yellowstone, or if they were available, but we had a cabin in Yellowstone for the night. It was dark, with no electricity, can't remember what water/toilet facilities we had. There was a potbellied stove that my Mom struggled all night with to get a fire going. It was freezing by morning. Anyway, the layout in the video in the O.P. reminds me of the clearing we were in. My older brother Bill, my younger brother Jimmy, and I took a walk around the clearing. We saw a bear go into (I hope) an empty cabin, and the door shut behind it. I remember the bear was making a lot of noise inside the cabin. My brother Bill told Jimmy and me to stay back behind trees maybe 25-50 feet from the front of the cabin. There were overflowing trash cans by the front of the cabin. Bill walked over to the side of that cabin and found a long stick. He hid alongside the corner of the cabin and pushed the door slightly open with the stick. He was back to Jimmy and me by the time the bear pushed the door open with his nose, and the last I saw of it as we raced back to our cabin was the bear standing in the door with his head in the air. Bill was 10, I was almost 5 and Jimmy was almost 4. I think we told Mom and she said, "Jesus Christ, leave the bears alone!" Jimmy and I both had birthdays later on that trip, pretty surprising. lol