yup, all of that in black bear, and a few times in grizzly bear country.

Touch wood, no problems with bears. You can't keep the food/human
smells away, especially when camped at same spot for a while.
But we keep the area clean etc, and we have on occasion cached the
food suspended from trees (don't know how useful that is).

I guess the one thing we do that might be useful, is that we mostly
don't camp in areas where bears have become habituated to human
presence.

Our early warning devices and last line of defense are 2 largish dogs :)

alistair

On 11-Feb-11, at 8:41 AM, Sheilah Rogers wrote:

> (okay good. i'm not nuts for thinking about this)
>
> so are you guys not only cooking in the van, but also popping the
> top in bear country when you camp?
>
> because unlike an RV, we got some fairly easy access (considering
> bears are climbers), i would think?
>
> s.