SURPRISE!

When we pulled up to the Ranger Station to pay for our adventure, I asked the Ranger if there had been any animal sightings in the park.  He reported to us that there had been a bear hanging out at Shadow Lake, but there hadn't been any elk sightings in over 2 months (or weeks.) So of course, that is where I wanted to head.
Along the way we saw some chipmunks and lots of birds, but no bears, granite we were not in bear loving country as it was steep rocky terrain.  It was more like snake loving country and yes, we did look for sone, but didn't find any.
As we came down off the ridge and into the valleys full of flowers and old campsites, we began to think that this more like where a bear would live.  On the trail, we came to a fork in the road and had to decide to go left or right.  (Interesting enough, the trail split had no sign as to which way we should go) We went right and hoped that it was the right way to go.  Just over a baby part of the hill we found a small path that people had been using to get to the lake that we could see, but had been blocked off, so we took a look and continued our hike and conversation, not really paying attention to our surroundings.
We came down a little hill with Riles in front of me and went over a little bridge that covered a small creek.  I was pretty interested in the bridge as the pieces we were crossing on were spaced out a bit more than the other bridges we had crossed.  When I looked up from the bridge, I heard Riles yell, "Bear! Bear!" I looked to my left and right in front of us in the water was a brown bear.  He/She was hanging out in the water kind of looking around.  We scrambled up the other side of the trail and around a bend, caught our breathes and then proceeded back down to (of course) take some photos.

This was the best one that turned out as the camera guy was a little shaken.  The bear hung out for a bit and then turned right and ran up the hill.  He never really made any connection of us being there.
We, too, took off,  and it was kind of in the same direction as the bear, but we were down on the trail and he was on the hill above us.  I kept looking left to see if he was going to come down the hill and attack us.  Heee here!