If you want to RV to Alaska, you’ve must be prepared to become intimately acquainted with the Northern Rockies scary bears and bugs. Be on your best behavior or get eaten. It’s that simple.

We thought we had seen the ugliest of insects when we met flying cockroaches in Florida. Well, up here in the Great White North, they get uglier, meaner and more plentiful. And the locals aren’t shy about letting you know what to expect.

From stinging black flies to bears and sparrow-sized mosquitoes, there is no escape from nature’s biggest side show freaks. Now we know what it means to be in “raw, untamed wilderness.”

Yes, the mosquitoes really are as big as you’ve heard. We purchased a Thermacell mosquito repellent to keep them away. So far we haven’t need to use it yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

The critters impact us on every level. Ever since working out with the Super Seniors over winter, Jim and I had a good exercise routine going. We were running anywhere from five to eight miles at a time, almost every day of the week. But with all of the bear activity in British Columbia, and now the Yukon, we’ve scaled way back on our daily workouts.

Now that we’re in the Northern Rockies scary bear territory, we always run together now, something we rarely did before. And we never leave home without our arsenal of bear protection, including bear spray, bear noisemakers and a cell phone to blast loud obnoxious workout music on the trail. I’m really hoping we don’t meet any bears who like Demi Lovato.

We only run until we see a pile of bear poop. I constantly worry thinking about how we could get eaten by a bear on the trail while Wyatt is home alone waiting for us. So when we see bear poop, we turn around and head back.

My new mantra is, “Better to be slightly out of shape and alive than get eaten by an angry grizzly.” This journey has brought a whole new level of excitement into our morning workouts.