Sawtooth Vacation

 

The Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho are beautiful, wild, and a terrific place for a vacation.  The family headed there for a long weekend at a resort with lovely log cabins and a beautiful outdoor pool.  True wilderness, which meant the resort clerk made sure we knew that the local bears had come down from the hills and were prowling around for food, so we should be sure to bag up our garbage and use the tie downs on the garbage cans.  But this vacation was not focused on the wilderness; instead four siblings, their partners, mom and dad, and one grand baby were bedding down in one cabin, and the oldest brother and his wife were parked next to the cabin in their posh RV. Luxury and intense family togetherness!

The cabin had a beautiful covered porch where we set up a string of metal tables so everyone could sit down to dinner.  After dinner the whole crew played a raucous game of cards and everyone finally packed it in when the growing mosquito population threatened exsanguination. Snoozing in the RV meant that we needed to plug it in somewhere, but the cabin windows were fixed and the cabin had no external plugs so there was no way we could snake an extension cord safely through a window. So the cord had to come through the main cabin door...leaving it ajar.  Somehow my husband and I were appointed to sleep on the floor up against the door, so we could hold it shut against all invaders, including garbage-hunting bears.

The real guy was cuter.

The night was long and the floor was hard. Every rustle and snore woke us up, so it's no wonder we were awake at 3 a.m. when a rustling noise came from a grocery bag on the floor.  As our flashlight found the bag, over the edge popped up the cutest little pale gray mouse with huge pink round ears and twitching white whiskers...Mickey had nothing on this guy. 

Unfortunately, the discovery that a mouse had been raiding the baby's cereal enraged the new, first-child mom and everyone was up for at least 30 minutes discussing what to do with the rest of the food.  Mickey Jr. got away scot free, thank goodness, but the rest of us took forever to settle down.

 Sometime around dawn, after two hours of never quite falling asleep, the two of us door guardians heard heavy footsteps thudding up the stairs and onto the front porch.  The adrenaline rush accelerated when we heard a rasping sound as something moved around the metal tables, just on the other side of the not-even-closed doors. Something big was licking the tables for leftover crumbs.

My husband jumped up (in naught but his underwear), wielding his flashlight, ready to take on the invader...was it a bear foraging for food, just outside the door, less than a yard away? 

 "What are you doing?" I squeaked, wondering how the hell opening the door was a good idea.

He clearly wasn't listening though. Fixated on the threat, he threw open the door before I could even get out of my sleeping bag, so we were both front and center when a huge head loomed out of the pale morning light and, backlit, filled up the doorway.

My husband inserted himself right up to the door frame, bravely blocking the killer bear and hissed, "Shoo!"

 Shoo?  Shoo?!?

It was one of the resort's burros; they had freed themselves from their overnight shelter and gone foraging for food amidst the cabins.