Day 66: Bear Viewing in Lake Clark National Park and Preserve

June 19,2014

Today began with wonderful sunshine and continued throughout the day. YEA! We know you may be tired of all our eagle pictures so today we will bore you with BEARS!!! We started the day with another fairly early wake up at 5:00 am. We had a big day in front of us and it began with a visit to Two Sister's Bakery in old historic Homer. Goodness, it was good! So good that it was agreed that the four of us should return at a more leisurely pace tomorrow morning. 

Today we had other things on our minds. We had to be at the airport for our flight seeing/bear viewing flight at 7:30. We have all looked forward to this for quite some time.

We flew to Lake Clark National Park and Preserve and landed on the beach of Chinitna Bay on the Cook Inlet. The 1 hour flight was breath taking. We flew around Mount Redoubt, a 10,197 foot volcano which was releasing steam this morning. A mountain very deep in snow but with all that fire within. What a magnificent sight to see. It was also nice to see Homer from the air.

Steam vent on Mt Redoubt

Landing on the beach

When we all disembarked the single engine air craft we received our viewing instructions. We had to stay tightly together as a group, walk single file, and if a bear approached we were to kneel down and be very still. The bears here are accustomed to seeing humans and do not consider us a food source, so as long as we are not threatening to them they just ignore us. And that is just what they did all day – ignored us. The most important thing we had to remember was “Do Not Run” under any circumstances because then the prey instinct would kick in and we might be attacked. We know there are those that find this situation to be extremely crazy, stupid, and absolutely insane. We understand those of you who feel this way. However, this was probably one of the most awesome things any of us has ever done. We could see at least 8 brown bears at one time. We saw them grazing on grass, playing and wrestling with each other, sleeping, and clamming. We never felt afraid at any point in time even though one sort of surprised us when it emerged from the woods very close to us – less than 50 feet from us. Between the four of us we took over 1,000 pictures. Here are  few. They will just have to speak for themselves.

How we were supposed to act

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are five bears in this picture

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We spent about 3 hours on the ground with the bears and then returned to Homer. A little later in the afternoon we went to Anchor Point. It is just a few miles from Homer and is the most westerly point in the US that can be reached by contiguous roads. On the way there we saw a moose cow with 2 calves beside the road.

 

 

Eagles were everywhere on the beach at Anchor Point.

 

 

This was another location where they used the tractor/skid loader to launch boats. This afternoon they were coming back in from fishing and driving back up onto the trailer and being pulled out by the tractor. They were so far out it looked like the tractor would surely be washed away. Very fun to watch.

 

 

 

 

All in all this was a wonderful day for all of us and we feel so blessed and thankful to be able to see and do all these magnificent things. Tomorrow we plan to drive to Seward - probably more risky than our visit with the bears today.