The ranger who had been talking on his walkie-talkie stopped us and he said,

hold on a minute guys, I'm going to need you to just stay here on this platform for a few minutes

because there's some bear activity in the area.

So we waited and then all of a sudden

through the trees came the biggest bear I have ever seen. This is the Dear Bob and Sioux Podcast, our stories of adventures and misadventures as we traveled to all the U.S. National Parks and other public lands.

I'm Karen Smith.

And I'm Matt Smith.

We're the authors of the Dear Bob and Sue series of books.

Today we're going to go bear watching in Catmy National Park.

We are. Catmy is a very unique park and preserve in southwestern Alaska that's a habitat

for salmon and home to several thousand brown bears.

Now if you stay in the park during peak bear season you'll have plenty of close

encounters with these animals. We certainly did and you'll hear about all of them. of

plenty of close encounters with these animals. We certainly did and you'll hear about all of them in today's episode.

And to kick things off, we're talking about hiking with bear spray whenever we're in bear country

and asking what exactly happens when a can of bear spray expires?

And at the end of the episode, we'll answer a question from a listener in our mailbag segment. Well, you'll be happy to know that I was cleaning out the garage today or my workshop and organizing the camping stuff and I found the

expired bear spray and I've taken it out of the rotation so we don't take it

with us anymore.

Oh, that's good.

Because it seemed to me there were a few hikes that we did where I was the one

carrying the expired bear spray.

...