Grand Teton National Park, Wyo. There's wildlife you don't mind surprising in northwest Wyoming — like the family of elk my daughter and I stumbled upon on our otherwise deserted trail early one morning in Yellowstone National Park. We detoured, wide-eyed, around them.

Susan Morse/Washington Post (ENLARGE)

Taking the path to Surprise Lake gives hikers beautiful views of the mountains and lakes -- not to mention the occasional glimpse of a bear (or moose, or elk or other 'charismatic megafauna') making its way across the trails.

Susam Morse/STFWashington Post (ENLARGE)

Laura Waldman makes her way toward Bradley and Taggart lakes in WyomingÕs Grant Teton National Park, a 6-mile hike on a fairly quiet trail.

AP (ENLARGE)

Grizzlies in the wild can live to be 25 years old. Though they are carnivores, their diet also includes nuts, berries and leaves.

• What to know if you go

Then there's the other kind, and it's this that has me worried as I eye the scat — hiker-speak for animal droppings — along our steep, 10-mile round-trip trudge to Surprise and Ampitheater lakes, some 9,700 feet above sea level.

When Laura and I decided to go hiking this summer in Grand Teton National Park, just south of Yellowstone, the iconic mountain landscape was only part of the lure. We also hoped to see large wild animals.

When people talk here of moose jams and buffalo jams, they're not referring to spreads for your breakfast toast, but traffic bottlenecks caused by drivers stopping to ogle wildlife. Still, there are some creatures you'd be thrilled to see from the roadside you'd just as soon not startle on a mountain path.

Bears on the traiil

Ursus arctos horribilis tops that list for me. The largest carnivore in the continental United States, a grizzly can weigh up to 700 pounds and is capable of charging at 35 mph. Its smaller, slightly less fearsome relative, Ursus Americanus (black bear, though it actually can be sandy or brown in color), isn't far behind.

The scat in front of us is larger than 2 inches in diameter. Some of it is fresh. And it's continuing along the zigzag trail.

I start to sing: "Oh, Mary, don't you weep, don't you mourn." I sing louder.

Make noise: Sing, talk, let them know you're there. That's what the guidebooks say, and I've got nothing better to offer, having declined bear spray. ("It's a weapon; we don't carry weapons," Laura had said, and I was inclined to agree — especially after seeing the $60 price, not including the holster, and the can of Body Guard Rescue pepper spray reliever on the shelf next to it.)

Laura says she doesn't mind the singing; in fact, she rather likes it. But being a confirmed nonsinger, she won't join in. Only once does she say, "If you're that scared, maybe we shouldn't go." Even in their 20s, your kids still know how to get you. I shut up. Then I notice the tracks, skirting one edge of the sandy trail. They show, at regular intervals, a roundish spot — a pad. And in front of it, the imprints of — it could only be — claws.

I'm not alone in worrying about bears.

"I think a lot of people kind of get a little paranoid. Around here ... we call it bearanoid," says Jackie Skaggs, spokeswoman for the National Park Service in Grand Teton. "We don't want people to be fearful and have to curtail their activities, but to just be smart."

Being smart around big animals

If you and a bear want the same piece of trail, the bear wins. It's up to you, says Skaggs, to detour around, giving it a wide berth, or failing that, "turn around and retrace your steps and give the bear the trail."

For our introductory hike, we pick the park's single most popular trail: the short climb to Inspiration Point. The hike — a mile up and a mile back — is perfect for bodies still adjusting to the higher altitude, 6,200 feet in the Teton valley floor. (If you're tempted, get to the South Jenny Lake parking lot early, or be prepared to slug it out for a space. Evil, evil Jenny Lake, we will mutter ever after when passing it.)

Under a darkening sky, we take a shuttle boat across the lake, then start up to the overlook in a column of entirely too many families with small children. Not fun, opines Laura. Just getting our bearings, I offer. No self-respecting predator is going to take on a crowd this size, I figure, no matter how many huckleberries (a bear favorite) grow along the trail.

But crowds aren't what we've come for. So we resort to that trusty people-shaking tactic: continuing on. A half-mile past the lookout, we've left behind three-quarters of our fellow travelers. By a mile or two farther, we have the narrow, winding path almost entirely to ourselves, with the Tetons towering magnificently above. When the storm finally breaks and we run for the shelter of some overhanging rocks, the day is redeemed. And no bears.

Sticking to the trail

For our second Teton expedition, we decide: Enough with the kid stuff. We settle on a six-mile hike up to Taggart and Bradley lakes. As far as the bears go, we figure that as long as we stick to established trails and keep out of the backcountry, we'll be fine. Surprise. The Park Service board at the trail head welcomes us to the backcountry.

In contrast to Inspiration Point, we have the trail almost to ourselves; the few fellow hikers we pass don't stay in sight or earshot long. This is more like it, we agree, as we follow a stream (talk louder, guidebooks advise; it's harder for bears to hear you above the rushing water), then wind upward through wildflowers and forests of pine and spruce and fir.

Bruce Springsteen to the rescue. "We are climbing ... Jacob's ladder, We are climbing," I sing, drawing on "The Seeger Sessions" CD we've been playing in the car. Then, less thematically apt, but with just as steady a walking beat, "Low bridge, everybody down. Low bridge, coming to a town." After a little while, though, I fall back on talk.

Somewhere along the figure-eight loop trail, I find myself telling Laura about "Grizzly Man." That, you'll recall, was the 2005 Werner Herzog documentary about wildlife activist Timothy Treadwell, who spent years in the Alaska wilderness living alongside grizzlies before he was eaten by one in 2003. (Audiotapes left running recorded the attack; authorities who tracked the bear and killed it found Treadwell's remains inside.)

Parents, don't do this to your children.

I am days convincing Laura after this that even if we do happen on a bear, it isn't likely to eat us. Scare us, charge us, maybe. Eat us, no. Treadwell's was an unusual case, I argue; bears don't normally eat people.

Why not? she persists. They like meat. Why wouldn't they like us?

Thank goodness the beauty of Taggart Lake doesn't let you stay focused on fear. We wade in the clear water, then perch on some rocks along the edge to eat our lunch and marvel.

'A fed bear is a dead bear

The problem with bears in our parks, naturalists tell us, generally isn't the bears; it's people. If people wouldn't be so careless in leaving scraps of food around, or leaving their backpacks and coolers unattended, there wouldn't be a problem with bears. Because, Skaggs says, "that's when they learn to associate people with an easy meal and loose their fear about approaching people."

As the Park Service newspaper tells visitors, "A fed bear is a dead bear." Just this year the agency euthanized a black bear that had developed a nasty people habit.

The hike a day later to Surprise and Amphitheater lakes is our most ambitious. Because the trail gains 3,000 feet over five miles, it's considered strenuous, though the footing along the long, sandy switchbacks is fairly even. My guidebook, in true public relations spirit, describes the trail as "an excellent opportunity to quickly gain elevation and reach treeline in a relatively short hike." Translation: This is going to hurt.

Mindful of the challenge, we start early — but not so early that the trail-head parking area is deserted or that any quadruped might confuse the clear blue skies with dawn. (Later, when we're trying to catch our breath seemingly after every few yards, we'll be glad we don't have the midday sun to contend with, too.) For the first two miles or so, until the switchbacks begin, the trail follows a lateral moraine — a deposit of earth left by the glacier above us. Then come the forests of fir and pine, including whitebark pine, what I later discover to be a bear delicacy.

We're something like three miles into the hike when I spot the scat and the tracks. The scat stops but the tracks continue, hugging the outer edge of the trail. Strange, I think, that the animal stays on the trail.

Not so strange, I think a bit later, when I see a sprinkling of trail mix here along the side of the trail — and there again, a few feet later. I scoop it up, wrap it in a tissue and stick it in my back pocket. I can brood about it or I can glory in the eye-popping vista down the mountain to our left. I choose the vista. Through the trees, we see Taggart and Bradley below us and the Gros Ventre range to the east.

A half-mile or less from the top, the altitude gets to Laura. She rests, takes some water, but feels nauseated, has a headache. You go on, she says, I'll meet you at the bottom. After due consultation (Are you sure you're OK? You're sure you don't want me to come?), we part ways. When I reach the lakes a short time later, and then a viewpoint for the glacier beyond them, I don't linger long. I'm eager to start back down to meet her.

Photographic proof

I'm a half-hour into my descent when I see a family of hikers standing to the side, looking down the trail just below us, around a switchback — cameras pressed to their faces. "There's a bear," they say. And sure enough, there it is. A small black bear, maybe 40, 50 feet away, right in the middle of my trail, feeding on some vegetation. It doesn't threaten me at all, just minds its own business. I round the switchback, then stop. I pull out my camera (Laura's going to want proof) but resist the urge to move closer for a better picture. Doing so is the cause of many bear attacks, I remember reading.

Then I call to the people just above me. If you're done with your photos, do you mind if I scare it away so I can continue down? No objection. I take the whistle I'm wearing around my neck (my latest strategem) and blow hard. The bear skitters off, vanishes. And I'm making tracks for the car. Loudly.

"Follow the drinking gourd. Follow, follow the drinking gourd ... Oh to be in Oleana, that's where I long to be ... Hey, haul away, we'll haul away, Joe ... O-oh freedom, freedom. O-oh freedom. O-oh freedom over me. And before I'd be a slave, I'd be buried in my grave, and go ho-ome to my lord, and beeeee freeeee."

My advice: Before you go, brush up on your song repertoire. In the 2 1/2 hours it took me to get down, I did some deep digging into mine.

Oh, and the animal tracks. Once I got back, I looked them up in "Mac's Field Guide to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks."

Could have been a black bear, though the prints I saw had a rounder pad and bigger claws.

What other animal could have made them?

A mountain lion.

IF YOU GO

Getting there

Expect to pay about $500 round trip from Atlanta to Jackson, Wyo.

About the park

Grand Teton National Park, about 12 miles from Jackson, Wyo., is open year-round. The entrance pass ($25 per vehicle) is good for seven days in all parks, including Yellowstone. The boat shuttle across Jenny Lake to the start of the Inspiration Point hike costs $9 round trip.

When to go

Late spring (May) through early fall (October) is best for hiking. By mid-November or so, snow on the trails makes hiking difficult. By mid-December, skiing rules. Summer is the most crowded. Whenever you go, pack for quick-changing weather: Temperatures can drop 30 degrees in minutes when a storm passes. Even on warm, sunny days, stuff a lightweight rain jacket in your backpack when hiking.

When to see the animals

Bears are most active in September, when they feed heavily just before denning, says Mark Bruscino, bear biologist for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. They're also active in March and April, when they emerge hungry from hibernation. The Park Service warns spring visitors to steer clear of animal carcasses and not get between a mother and her cub. On the trail or from the road, you're most likely to see bears, moose, elk and other "charismatic megafauna," as park officials call large wild animals, close to dawn and dusk.

Where to stay

• It's hard to beat the national park lodges for dramatic settings, scrumptious dining and other amenities. The Grand Teton Lodge Co. (1-800-628-9988, www.gtlc.com) handles reservations for Jackson Lake Lodge, Jenny Lake Lodge and Colter Bay Village, all inside the park.

• Spacious cabins and lodge rooms at Jackson Lake Lodge start at $159 a night for a double. Jenny Lake cabins go for a stiff $400 to $500 a night, but the price includes breakfast and dinner and horseback riding. At family-friendly Colter Bay, prices range from about $40 for a cabin with a shared bath to $155 for a two-room cabin with four double beds; there are also tent cabins ($39) and an RV park. All three lodges closed for the season Oct. 1 and reopen around the end of May (dates vary).

• Signal Mountain Lodge (1-800-672-6012, www.signalmountainlodge.com), along Jackson Lake, has lodging from $109; it's open until Saturday.

• Other good choices: Dornan's Spur Ranch Cabins (307-733-2522, www.dornans.com), on the banks of the Snake River, is open year-round; in-season rates (May 19-Oct. 1) start at $155, off-season from $125. Triangle X Ranch (307-733-2183, www.trianglex.com) has lodging starting at $1,335 per person per week in peak season, when there's a seven-night minimum; off-season, there's a four-night minimum.

• Flagg Ranch (1-800-443-2311, www.flaggranch.com), between Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks, charges $159 and up a night; it closes for the season Monday and reopens in May. The city of Jackson, 12 miles south of the park, has lodging year-round (Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce, 307-733-3316, www.jacksonholechamber.com).

Information

Grand Teton National Park, 307-739-3300, www.nps.gov/grte.