Erik@Lucky8
New member
If you end up finishing in NY, Ill take it
Up here (near Yellowstone) you shouldn't have to worry about humans THAT much (every year there is one small run of wallets being stolen from cars near trailheads, but it tends to be a bored 16yo). Bears are a concern...but I keep my fridge inside my RRS with no issues (yet) and did the same with my Disco. I'm more concerned about the garbage bag (don't want that inside the rover while I sleep in there), so I move it about 300 yards away.
Just bring some bear spray and a gun (this is America....we love guns) and you'll be fine. Once a bear becomes a problem (i.e. repeated human/trash encounters), they either remove or destroy the animal.
You have a better chance of being murdered by a person on your travels than being mauled by a bear... Sure it happens, and sometimes no amount of preparation and preparedness will prevent it, but being bear savvy definitely lessens your chances.. You can even go as far as to prepare your meals etc in one place, clean up and wash dishes etc etc.. and then drive back to the place where you are camping for the night (maybe a mile or so away..) as a foreign traveler coming to the USA and then trying to purchase a gun for protection over here is definitely not an easy task nor one that would be advised..and then travelling across state and country borders, most states have different laws and then national parks and forests ban the carrying of firearms.. Even bear spray is not allowed to be carried across borders between the USA and Canada.. A flare gun is sometimes a better measure than nothing..
Sorry for the hijack, but... Please don't speak for any of the rest of us. The wife and I just spent 4 weeks "touring" BC, the Yukon and Alaska (aka: Bear Central), camping all along the way. Bears: yep. Guns: nope. No need for them. A matter of true factual information is, according to the NFS & GBA, that bear spray is much more effective on a bear than a firearm.
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If you have concerns about bears, there are a few things you can do to mitigate problems without needlessly taking the life of an animal:
1- take a bottle of ammonia, and spread it around your campsite (imagine how humans -us- react to the smell!)
2- dryer sheets, put them around your tent, car, food, etc. - bears hate the smell
3- a good quality compressed air horn (120 + db)
4- Bear bangers (basically an M80 with a pen launcher)
5- bear spray
6- and last, but not least: male urine (around the camp area) - hey, y'all like to drink beer anyway, right?:sombrero:
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It also doesn't hurt anything sleeping 6ft off the ground in an RTT But you should seal your cooler/fridge really well.