Tag Archives: bears

Our 2023 Road Trip #23: Great Smoky Mountain Bear Watch

May 22, 2026 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Me and Anne posing behind a wooden sign on a mountain road: "North Carolina - Tennessee state line, elevation 5046 feet, Great Smoky Mountains National Park

The Newfound Gap Overlook at Great Smoky Mountain National Park: no bears.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do…

In all our southern travels throughout the years, the only time we’d ever laid eyes upon the Great Smoky Mountains was at a faraway remove from Knoxville, Tennessee. We’d seen them blocking the horizon, but had never made time to add Great Smoky Mountain National Park to the list of national parks we’ve sauntered into, despite recommendations from some of my coworkers who made the Smokies and the nearby cities of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge their families’ annual getaways. Maybe that’s why we resisted for so long: going the same place every year for vacation has never been our thing as a couple (unless you count comic-cons) and it felt weird to follow their footsteps too closely, if that makes any sense.

This year we agreed it was time. We knew they’d be beautiful, maybe we’d catch a few unusual sights, and — kind of an in-joke between the two of us — maybe we’d spot our very first bear in the wild. Longtime MCC readers may recall our 2021 visit to Yellowstone National Park, which we’d heard had bears but contained exactly zero of them throughout our day there. Plenty of other four-legged creatures frolicked and gamboled and/or stood motionlessly in the shade, but the place was bear-free. We began to wonder if bears didn’t actually exist in America or were a myth invented by zoos to sell more tickets and toys.

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Indy Zoo Revue #1: Lions and Tigers and Bears!

July 3, 2017 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Bear + Stump!

“Sure hope you’re not waiting for me to get my butt stuck inside that stump like that idiot Winnie-the-Pooh.”

Longtime MCC readers have perused galleries of the various zoos we’ve visited throughout the course of our annual road trips, from San Antonio to Minnesota to Atlanta to Queens to my favorite so far at the base of Cheyenne Mountain (the prologue, the main event, and the best part). When our long-term MCC remastering project is completed over the next year or so, readers will also eventually be treated to pics of our experiences in Omaha, Philadelphia, and The Worst Zoo We’ve Ever Visited, which shall remain nameless for now. And those were just the menageries we’ve seen with the word “zoo” in their titles.

But we don’t have to leave town to see animals. I mean, besides the occasional deer and rabbits we see in our suburb, or the coyote that I’ve heard are skulking around other neighborhoods. We’re fortunate to live in a city with its own answer to all those options — the Indianapolis Zoo, which has come a long way over the last thirty years from its early days of depressed wildlife hunched over in tiny, stacked chain-link cages. Today their living spaces are vaster, the environments are natural and pretty in their own right, the animals are varied, and the concession stands have made progress in lunchtime edibility and flavors. It’s a fun place to be, but we’ve been to our zoo so many times that it never occurred to me till a couple weeks ago that in five years of Midlife Crisis Crossover, we’ve never posted a single photo of it here. That changes now.

In June my wife and I took my mom for a walk around the premises of our own Indianapolis Zoo to check out the current residents and the architectural upgrades on a sunny but not-so-sweltering Saturday. In this very special miniseries, we’ll take a look at the beasts and critters who welcomed us and hundreds of other families along the way.

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My Complete Video Oeuvre, Part 2 of 3: Bear on Scooter

December 27, 2012 By in Meta, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

In our previous precarious episode, the balancing bedazzlement of Chinese acrobats was the first humble example of my limited, sub-amateur experiences in the video medium.

One year later, at the 2010 Indiana State Fair I was stricken a second time by the impulse to test-drive my camera’s modest video function while watching live-action entertainment, just to see what would happen. I vaguely recalled a couple of mistakes not to repeat. This time we had front-facing seats; I kept the running time under a minute; and I found an odder subject.

With no schooling or forethought I created a modern masterpiece of bravery and stunt work, never to be duplicated or understood by rival artistes. The juxtaposition of a formidable force of nature with an understated man-made artifact examines the stark contrast between our attempts to navigate our world and nature’s cold-hearted insistence on denying the fundamental superiority of manifest destiny. On a deeper psychological level, the uneasy alliance between the avatars of ferocity and technology is an exemplary illustration of that innate contradiction known as the duality of man.

My thirty-nine-second magnum opus is called “Bear on Scooter”:

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