My family's typical summer vacation was coming to an end after a great day of hiking and driving through the Colorado Rocky Mountains.

My brother and I sat in the back seats listening to music, trying to stay awake.

All of a sudden, our eyelids shot open and our iPods flew toward the front of the car.

Now, fully awake, I hear my dad yell out and my mom start screaming.

A gigantic black object comes across my line of sight and immediately I can tell it is a 500-pound black bear sprinting across the road within 10 feet of our car.

For a few minutes, nobody says anything. Then, just as suddenly as we stopped, everybody starts yelling and crying, hugging and laughing.

The only way we could put such an amazing moment in words was, "Did we really almost just hit a bear?"

— Luke Marston, Hidden Valley High School

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