Alaska 2014: Day 111: Salmon, Eagles and Bear, Oh, My!

August 3, 2014

Well, the forecasters said we had lost our beautiful sunny days and we didn't have much sun this morning when we got up. It was a little warmer this morning as well. However, as the morning went on the sky cleared and we never had any rain. Another really nice, partly sunny day.

By the way, we did get yesterday's blog up early and didn't have to stay up so late waiting on the wi-fi but we still didn't get much sleep because we got up shortly after midnight to go out to a dark area to look at the northern sky for the northern lights. Unfortunately, clouds came in and we were not able to see anything. We did find out that Haines is still a hopping little town at 2:00 am. They were partying in the streets outside the two restaurants and bar when we were on the way back to the campground.

Since the previous three days had been pretty active days, we decided to stay at home today and do some maintenance, house cleaning and laundry. We also spent part of the morning doing some trip planning. We are trying to plan our route back to Alabama.

We grew tired of doing that sort of thing and about 1:00 pm decided we should take a few snacks and ride back out to Chilkoot Lake and see if there were any bears fishing today. The plan was to take about an hour or so break and then come back and finish up such mundane things as mopping the floor. It was a pretty good plan, too. However..... salmon, eagles and bear, oh, my! So the responsible adult things lost out to the wonderfully amazing Alaskan things.

As we were riding out to Chilkoot we saw the fishing boats were back out in the inlet. We stopped to watch a while and get some pictures of the gill netting. Seemed like a lot of work but they put out these huge gill nets in various locations, let them float in the current for a while and then used this large drum apparatus to reel them back in, stopping as necessary to remove the fish. You can see the fish in the net in some of the pictures. That was fun to watch.

Then we drove on to Chilkoot and as we were driving up the river (remember it is only a little over a mile long river), the eagles “called” to us. First, there were two eagles close together in the river that were just so pretty in the sun that we had to stop to take their pictures. Well, that was our down fall. About a thousand pictures later – after we watched eagles fishing and repairing their nest, let Scout play in the lake, watched some people fishing, and watched a bear fishing, we finally went back home about 6:30 pm. We watched the bear for over an 70 minutes as he came up the river toward us, swam over to the opposite shore, came back across the river climbing on the fish weir and eating salmon (sockeye) and then came out onto the camp road right in front of us and climbed up the side of the hill and into the woods. No, we were not in the truck, we were standing on the side of the road talking to one of the rangers – who had bear spray and horn, but no gun. It was an amazing afternoon watching wildlife.!! A little scarey at the end, but amazing. We will just let the pictures tell the rest of the story. And if anyone is interested – we have many, many more.

Fishing eagle that looked a little annoyed that we were watching.

At first, we didn't understand why the eagle was pulling up grass and throwing it back down

Then we saw it pick the grass back up and put it in a pile.

Then it picked up the pile and flew off to its nest

Some eagle nests are bigger than cars

Scout looking for fish. He also closely watched the people fishing from the bank. If we had not been holding him he might have taken their fish.

Salmon fishing is a family sport

The fishermen get out of the river when they see a bear approaching. Seems like a good plan to us.

When we first saw the bear, it was walking along the bank with a Ranger escort. The Rangers kept people from getting too close to the bear or blocking the road.