Yes, bears can invade your Pennsylvania campsite. Ask me how I know.

The worst part about getting mauled by a bear would be my father saying “I told you so” over and over.

I used to think that, anyway, until around 2 a.m. on Wednesday, at Ricketts Glen State Park in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Getting mauled by the bear would be worse.

My kids had banished me to a solo tent a day earlier because of alleged snoring. Three of them, including the 4-year-old, slept in comfort on an air mattress in the larger tent.

I usually wear earplugs or headphones when I camp, to drown out the little footfalls of raccoons or falling branches, but a sudden racket of clanging pots and pans jolted me awake. I figured it was my 18-year-old who still likes to annoy me.

“Dude, what are you doing? Stop making so much noise,” I said.

Then I heard the lid to the cooler slamming, and I shot up out of my sleeping bag with a dreaded realization: I’d forgotten to put the cooler in the car.

This was no raccoon, or my son.

When I shined my phone’s light out the tent window, an enormous black bear was about a foot away, beside the cooler, looking right at me.

I like to think of myself as an outdoorsman who is, for the most part, comfortable and prepared in bear country. I spent a week in deep Alaska earlier this summer, storing food in metal barrels at night with my head on a swivel. I’ve hiked and camped in Banff, the Sierra Nevadas, the Adirondacks, and was forced to watch a bear safety video before camping in Yosemite National Park. I even cuddled a black bear cub in my jacket once, for work.

Between Alaska and several trips in Pennsylvania this summer, I’ve seen about a half dozen, the most ever for me in one year. One of them was just days earlier, in the woods at Ricketts Glen, about 100 yards from my site.

“Careful, momma is probably around,” a Department of Conservation and Natural Resources employee told us.

Of course, she was. Why didn’t I think of that?

DCNR had gone out of its way to warn campers that bears and raccoons have been a “major problem” at the campground due to “careless campers.”

“If food/coolers are left out animals WILL enter your site, eat your food, and destroy your belongings,” the sign on the bathroom door warned.

That’s plain talk. The sign wasn’t there last time I camped at Ricketts.

I’ve been camping for about 30 years, and I haven’t always put coolers away, unless required. I had to do it in the Adirondacks and used a big, metal bear box in California. Once, on a camping trip to Baxter State Park in Maine, I had to canoe the cooler back and forth to the truck daily.

Usually, I put a rock on the cooler, and raccoons can’t lift it. Once, while camping on the Ausable River in Upstate New York, I threw hiking boots at skunks that were tearing up a bag of shredded cheese.

When I reached out to Travis Lau, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Game Commission, about my bear encounter, he pointed me to Bearwise.org, a website the agency uses to help campers and hikers be safe in bear country.

“A bear’s sense of smell and its willingness to follow its nose to food is the common thread behind all of this advice,” Lau told me.

A quick check told me I’d broken more than Bearwise rules.

My dad, who’s been trying to pound bearphobia into me for decades, saw the sign when he came to the campground for a day, too.

“Do you want my bear spray and my knife?” he asked.

I didn’t. And at the time of my encounter with the bear, I had only my phone, earbuds, a pair of Crocs, and a book in my tent. I don’t think my copy of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “Braiding Sweetgrass” would have made a dent.

I began yelling at the bear to go away and for my son to wake up. He described it as a “scream.”

“You were a big baby,” he later said.

Lights began to pop on at surrounding campsites, and my son emerged from the tent with a large metal flashlight that had a strobe effect that seemed to annoy the bear.

“We forgot to put the cooler away,” I yelled, loud enough for everyone to hear.

I pondered whether he should take the toddler and hide in the car. Oddly, she never woke up and only remembers the daddy longlegs in the canoe.

The bear retreated as we moved forward, but it didn’t seem scared. It would inch back toward camp when it was out of the light, emitting this low growl/whine the whole time, and I got the sense it was ticked off and really wanted my Ballpark franks.

“My God, it’s huge,” my son said.

When it finally moved on, passing through other sites, I heard other campers yelling and car horns honking in the night. I stayed awake for hours, off adrenaline.

“The guy next door left his food out,” a camper beside me said in his tent. “You can’t do that.”

We camped five nights, and that was the only night I forgot to put the cooler away. The lesson is learned, though. I’ll never leave a cooler out again when I camp, particularly the one the bear bit a hole in.