Murphy to Manteo: Finding new adventures, historic detours, and the soul of North Carolina on the state’s longest highway: U.S. Route 64. Read the series.

I’m frozen, staring into the round, brown eyes of an American black bear. The only thing I hear is my heart thumping in my ears. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my husband’s hand hovering, resisting the urge to roll up the car window. Standing on her back legs, the bear is taller than me. Her shiny coat, black as ink, reflects the evening’s last sunlight.

And she’s looking right at us.

How did we find ourselves in this predicament? I can’t say we didn’t have fair warning …

• • •

The caution came from a blinking road sign on U.S. Route 64 in Dare County: “DRIVE CAREFULLY,” we read, just before Alex and I turned onto a dirt road in a cloud of dust, gravel crunching beneath our tires. I volunteered to hop out and grab a map from a kiosk before continuing, but as I reached for the door handle, I hesitated. In the murky, early evening twilight, the woods obscured what lay within and all around: a vast protected area of wildlands, farm fields, swamp forests, marshes, and pocosin. The last of these, a rare wetland habitat, supports a diverse array of wildlife, including river otters, endangered red wolves, alligators, hundreds of species of birds, and one of the highest concentrations of American black bears in the world.

But I didn’t see a hulking shape approaching, so I cautiously stepped out of the car. The air was humid and hushed — almost like the woods were absorbing sound. And it took all of 23 seconds to realize that bears were the least of our worries. No, the real threat was actually much smaller. And … buzzier.

The Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge is home to one of the largest populations of black bears in eastern North Carolina and the eastern United States. photograph by Neil Jernigan

I swatted at three of the biggest mosquitoes I’d ever seen, all trying to land on various exposed body parts, as an enormous black horsefly zipped past my ear and its equally large lime-green friend pelted me in the head. I snagged a map and made a beeline for the car, feeling very much like Tippi Hedren in The Birds. “DRIVE!” I hollered at Alex as I slammed the door.

Word to the wise: There’s no need for bear spray at Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. What you need is DEET.

• • •

Despite being one turn off of the state’s longest highway and about 20 miles from Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head, this 160,000-acre refuge on the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula feels remote. Desolate, even. The sun hung low as we drove deeper into the wild, and we discovered that, as long as the car was moving, it was (relatively) safe to leave the windows down. Which we hoped would make it easier to spot the refuge’s biggest residents: black bears.

We turned onto Sawyer Lake Road, part of the refuge’s wildlife drive, where locals sometimes compete to see who can count the most bears in a single evening. I peered into the dense pocosin woods to our right. To my left, a sputtering sound broke the silence. “Did you just swallow a bug?” I whispered without turning. “No,” Alex said. “My mouth just ran into one.”

I recalled the tips that Sarah Toner, visitor services manager of the Coastal North Carolina National Wildlife Refuge Complex, had shared with me earlier. “Drive slowly, scan the fields, scan the road ahead, scan the trees, and watch for a little black head to pop up — sometimes, in late summer, when the vegetation is tall, all you can see is a pair of ears,” she’d advised. “You’ll see them foraging in the open on the farm fields or moving back and forth between the woods and fields. They can also be up in the trees. In the summertime, we think they might climb them to get a little breeze.”

Nature’s play on scratch-and-sniff, scent marking is a communication method for black bears: “mine,” “beware,” “come eat,” or “let’s meet.” photograph by Neil Jernigan

“That looks like a very beary tree,” I said to Alex. He nodded. “Very beary.”

And yet, no bears. We crept along, passing a few other cars headed in the opposite direction, their occupants peering out the windows as purposefully as we were. I wondered if they knew something we didn’t. Ridiculously, I imagined a bear bursting out of the brush and charging our car. We jumped at a shadowy bush and at a lanky, swaying weed.

As we rounded a bend, the woods gave way to an open field — and I gasped. There they were, two black bears, a couple hundred yards away. Seeing them lazily grazing in an eastern North Carolina field — instead of a Smoky Mountain forest — felt surprisingly unexpected. We watched them as they went about their business, excitedly swapping our binoculars back and forth. Big green horseflies and mosquitoes assailed us through the windows before escaping through the sunroof, our “keep driving” plan abandoned. Suddenly, we heard a rustling that was far too loud to be the bears in the field. It sounded like it was … right next to the car. In the overgrown vegetation between the road and the field, tall grasses swayed. And then she popped up, standing tall on two legs, staring right at us.

• • •

So here we are, practically nose-to-snout with a black bear. We stare back. As the shock wears off, what I notice isn’t her teeth or claws or paws — it’s her fuzzy, oval-shaped ears, almost comically big and, well, completely adorable. We quickly realize that she’s paying us no mind at all, determined in the pursuit of her prey, which is tucked into the prickly brambles: warm, juicy berries.

“Hey, bear,” Alex whispers. “Hey, bear,” I echo.

We watch her until she sways into the woods, then we drive on. Beneath the setting sun, we see two more furry friends — one of them a gigantic male, or boar, that waddles past our car to splash into a canal in search of waterfront dining.

By now, we know that there’s no reason to be afraid. So long as visitors give them space, the bears are far too busy grubbing on the berries, nuts, seeds, corn, roots, and grasses in this unique habitat to worry about us. Here, in this protected refuge, established for this very reason, the bears thrive. And they’re a lot more gracious about eating in front of an audience than I’d be.

As dusk settles in at Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, the air warm and the sky a muted pink, I see this place in a different light. How could I have missed it before? What I mistook for desolate is overflowing with wildlife. What I thought was lonely and remote is actually peaceful and unspoiled. For creatures big and small, this is a haven, and I feel grateful for having stared into those warm, brown eyes. So go on, watch for bears. Just mind the mosquitoes.

More to Explore: To find out how to take your own bear safari, read our best tips for spotting them, and learn other ways to explore the refuge, visit ourstate.com/bears.