A bear story

The picture is of my sister Vickie near our car near the end of our camp set up.  You can see there are still things strapped to the top of the car so we were not completely set up when this picture was taken.  We had a six man tent and behind it you may be able to see the gazebo.  We used to camp nearly every weekend when I was young, or so it seemed to me.  We would take off as a family to new places although this particular weekend we headed to Richmond to camp and have fun visiting my mothers cousin Gloria Watler Wells and her family.  (A few useless notes here:  She had several children and she named all of them beginning with the letter R; Rhonda, Ronnie, Rodney etc.  another useless fact, they all had huge feet, Rhonda the oldest and a girl had size 13 shoes.  I have never seen feet as long as hers). 
Anyway, The park where we camped in Richmond was beautiful, our campsite was at the top of a fairly wooded hill overlooking a lake.  As normal, as soon as we arrived we set about setting up the tent and campsite before doing anything else.  We played, explored, ate and had family time as usual, then it was time to go to bed.  Once inside the tent laying in our sleeping bags we realized just how steep the slope was where we had set our tent up.  We all had to make adjustments to keep our heads higher than our feet.  We wiggled and moved around quietly adjusting so we could have our blood flow safely and properly in our sleep.  When we all settled down again and began to be silent and drift off to sleep all of a sudden we heard outside the tent, grunting, heavy sniffing and grunting.  There was a bear in camp! 
The entire family froze in fear as the bear sniffed around the bottom of the tent.  This was NOT a good thing!  We listened as silently as possible without moving.  Let me tell you that is not easy when your brain is telling you to scream and run!  We did not make any sound that may attract the bear.  We could hear him grunting and munching which meant he had found our food in the containers where we had stored them.  We had no idea how hungry he was or if he would find enough to eat in camp to satisfy his hunger but we were all silently praying his belly got full before he came near the tent again looking for more food.  He ate everything he found including some of the packaging.  We waited silently and finally he left our camp area.  After a reasonable length of time dad had us pack the car quickly and we left in the middle of the night thankful that we had not become bear food and that no one was hurt.