Bears!
I was riding my bike to Rothrock for a run this afternoon, when I realized that there was a big black bear right at the next turn! Then I saw that there were two tiny cubs with her! After a brief moment, they went into a small stream’s gully and I was forced to consider, “do I really want to start stalking a mother bear and her cubs?”
So after dumping my bike and carefully trotting over to the gully, I couldn’t see any sign of them. I wasn’t really looking too hard, since I couldn’t see very well into the gully despite being right on the edge of it. I didn’t want to surprise them. After a while, I began to think that they were probably gone. When I turned around to look back towards the bike, they were coming out of the gully just 100 feet away. 
After the mother spent some time looking back and forth at me and the cubs, they started walking across the field, and then broke out into a full run. I took as many pictures as my little camera could (it’s slow), while still admiring the scene outside the camera. The mother bear was gorgeous — she had a nice shiny black coat that shimmered in the sunlight. She waited at the edge of the woods for the little fuzzy cubs to catch up to her, and then they disappeared into the brush.
I was really excited, since I’ve been running in Rothrock for years, waiting to see a bear. What luck! It’s totally paid off to always carry a small camera on runs. Great, now I’m probably going to feel like I should start carrying the SLR…
Be sure to check out all of the pictures here.