There are bears on bear mountain (posted from my phone)

June 15, 2024

so we found some bears in Bear mountain.

they just happen to be in a zoo, animals rescued who could no longer survive in the wild .

They mingled with other answers we found there

this was our first trip to Bear mountain as opposed to all of those previous trips through it to some other destination mostly in the past to Woodstock or Kingston

we discovered route 9W during the previous trip North not with any destination though we did get within 28 mi of Kingston before we decided to turn back then got lost

but during this trip we saw magnificent vistas of the Hudson River we needed to return to for closer inspection

this time we drove until we saw the signs for Bear mountain State Park and piloted up through a road that climbed away from the river, a severe disappointment as was the collection of buildings and huge lawns we eventually encountered, not to mention the $10 charge to park when we paid in made our way past the building with the merry-go-round and sleepy attendant waiting for customers

we found a map for the site but could not find an overlook of the river listed so we got the bright idea to walk down the road and cross over to where the water was or make it onto the walkway of the Bear mountain bridge crossing the Hudson.

but it was a feat we soon discovered was dangerous as well as not feasible and the warning signs telling people to stay on the park path suggested that ours was not approved feature

we went back and already exhausted. we sat at a park bench to debate what to do next and decide to fall the maps and see what features were available at which point we noticed a direction to a doc what was not on the lake so we assumed it would be down by the river which it ultimately was after a winding ramp or set of stairs through a tunnel under the road and then down passing it turn off for the zoo and the museums then down down more winding past to where a massive freight train was passing to a tunnel under the train tracks to the dock

only the tunnel was flooded and so was the land leading to the dark on the other side

we turned back to what we thought would be a torturous climb by the path lines with benches and crows and we got back to the gate to the zoo and the museum more quickly than we had thought tours hanging out on the rocks nearby

more signs led us to what was called an outdoor exhibit a bunch of small plaques telling us about plants and animal life that we'd find on either side we also ran into a statue of Walt Whitman and one of his poems that was posted to the side celebrating nature

then we came upon the zoo although some of the exhibits were empty waiting for some replacement we encountered a porcupine first, large Moody and trying to avoid our attention

a building nearby offered a collection of snakes and turtles and such we stopped to look at before moving on and finally to the Bear area where a lonely brown bear patrolled the perimeters of his or her confinement on our return we learned that we're actually two bears the second one of which made his appearance and we learned these have been rescued and found a beaver along with his watery situation he hid it first and then came out swimming about and then hit again a nearby tree showed his apparently long-term project of carving it to pieces

Eventually, we got to other exhibits about the natives and the original settlers, also a back to other animals, when we finally saw the sign for an overlook, which brought us to a bridge, and then down closer to the water.

At one point, there was a statute of a elk, but facing out on a cliff we could not access and the best I could do was snap a picture from behind it, eventually returning to the tame area where a scattering of people were trying to make their way up the stairs to the lake.

It was a curious adventure.