Close encounters of the bear kind.....

But first we had four beautiful sunshiny days in a row in Homer

It was a quick 35 mile drive down to Homer from Deep Creek Beach. We got there mid morning hoping to improve our chances of getting an oceanfront campsite on the Homer Spit with views of the surrounding  snow capped mountains – and we did! The Homer Spit juts out 4 miles into Kachemak Bay – it’s a thin sliver of land where all of the fishing charters are located along with some restaurants, bars and shops.  The added bonus was 4 straight days of blue sky and sunshine – a rare occurrence in Alaska this summer…. We’ve had some nice days but rarely even 2 in a row – so four straight days of sunny, warmer weather was a real treat!!!!  We even had our jackets off during the day and wore short sleeve shirts – wow! We don't expect those of you who are enduring the heat and humidity to give us one smidgen of sympathy!

 Highlights of Homer: 

• Camping on the Homer Spit – what a fun place to be – fishing, sea otters, seals, eagles

• Boat ride through Kachemak Bay to Seldovia – lovely scenery on the boat ride plus whales, mama sea otter with her baby, puffins, seals. Seldovia is a quaint old Russian Village only accessible by boat and plane. 

• Hike through the lupine along Kachemak Bay

• Seeing a mama moose and 2 babies at Anchor Point – it’s the western most road in North America

Click on the arrow to see the video of the mama moose and TWO babies!
• Campfires in the evenings with our new friends and campground neighbors - Beth and Dick 

• Islands and Oceans Interpretive Center – learned a lot about the natural history of the Aleutian Islands and hiking trails down by the sea where we saw two eagles performing a mating dance!

Click on the arrow to see the two eagles mating dance

A close encounter of the bear kind – grizzly that is……

After 5 nights in Homer we headed north a couple of hours drive to Cooper Landing – it’s where the Russian River flows into the Kenai and is where the term “combat fishing” was born. There are so many salmon spawning on these two rivers that fisherman line up shoulder to shoulder along the banks of the rivers.  They are so close to each other that many wear protective goggles for their eyes. The local clinic has a permanent sign out front advertising that they do “fish hook removals”!  We suspect they have gotten lots of practice removing all the hooks!

Fisherman we met on the Kenai River Trail - off on a 5 day fishing trip

We stayed in the National Forest at the Russian River Campground where many of the fishermen stay. The campground is between the Kenai and the Russian Rivers so there are loads of places to fish along the banks of the river and where there are fish there are bears and eagles nearby….. The campground has bear warnings posted all around and also requires each camper to sign a form acknowledging proper storage of food to avoid attracting bears.

After we got  Rose set up we took a hike with Molly on a trail down to the Kenai River armed with our trusty “bear” whistle around my neck just in case we saw a bear  “up close and personal” - hoping we wouldn’t get that close to a bear. We didn’t get very far on the trail before we encountered a grizzly bear hiking right toward us – about 30 feet away!  I immediately forgot everything I’ve learned about bear avoidance and had visions of all three of us being the next meal for the hungry grizzly but luckily Gary kept his cool and said – “we need to back up and blow the whistle and you’ve got the whistle” .   Oh my gosh – I had forgotten about the whistle – so I blew it several times really loud and fortunately we found out that the bear didn’t like the sound of the whistle and ran into the woods.  Needless to say, our hike ended abruptly and we went back to the safety of the campground – or so we thought!

The next day we were at the campsite and a black bear came walking right by us – thank goodness we were all safe inside good ole’ Rose and could enjoy watching the bear as it ate berries in the campground. It’s hard to enjoy the wildlife when you’re afraid you’ll get eaten!

Highlights of Cooper Landing

• Not getting eaten by the grizzly bear – thank goodness it was just an adventure!

•  Float trip on the beautiful upper Kenai River – we saw 23 eagle nests  and beautiful scenery

• Watching the “combat” fishing  along the Kenai and Russian rivers and also watching the fisherman cross the Russian River on the “quirky” Russian River Ferry - it uses the fast flowing current to propel it across the river

Click on the arrow to see the video of the Russian River fisherman's ferry in action!

• Seeing a black bear in the campground from a safe distance in Rose

Next Stop is Seward – it’s the gateway to the Kenai Fjords National Park. We hope to snag another oceanfront campsite like we did at Deep Creek Beach and Homer. Could we possibly have 3 great campsites in a row?????

Exploring the Kenai River and Ninilchik on the Kenai Peninsula

Along the Kenai River


Our next stop was the Kenai River in the towns of Kenai and Soldotna. The Kenai is known for great salmon fishing and Alaskans, as well as anglers from all over the world, come to catch salmon on the river. The “dip netting” season opened for Alaskan residents the day after we arrived in town. Alaskans can use HUGE nets to scoop up the salmon at the mouth of the Kenai from July 10-31. One person told us they netted 85 salmon in just 2 hours! Alaskans catch as much fish as they can during this time and freeze it and can it to eat the rest of the year. We watched them dip net from their boats and also from shore right at the mouth of the Kenai River. We stayed at the Fred Meyer super store so no adventures with bears – just lots of noisy fishing trucks! At least it was free to camp there!

Razor clamming at Deep Creek Beach in Ninilchik

We drove 35 miles south towards Homer and had planned to stop for the night at a beach campground – we ended up staying 4 nights - it was a fabulous campground! We had an incredible view of the volcanoes across Cook Inlet plus we saw 100’s of eagles flying around near our campsite and seals and sea otters swimming along the beach right in front of Rose! The best part was the clamming - There are only 4 beaches in the US where you can find razor clams and we were lucky enough to be camping at one of them at the very lowest tide of the year when it's the best time to dig for the razor clams! We met a really fun couple at the campground from Fairbanks – Joanie and Rod. They invited us to go clamming with them and showed us how to use a "clam gun" (We didn't know that clams moved so fast that you need a gun to catch them!).   We had so much fun learning how to spot the clams under the sandy beach and dig them up with a “clam gun”!  The four of us dug 103 clams in 2 and a half hours! Joanie fried the clams and invited us for a delicious clam dinner! Plus they loaded us up with clams to take home with us - wonderful Alaskan hospitality!

On the same beach the sport fishing charters launch their boats using a tractor so they don’t have to wait for high tide to go fishing. It was fascinating to watch dozens of boats launch each day.

Highlights of Kenai:

• Watching the Alaskans dip net

Click on the arrow to see the video of Alaskans dip netting
• Seeing a Mama and baby moose at Captain Cook State Park

• A glimpse of Mt McKinley across Cook Inlet

Highlights of Deep Creek Beach in Ninilchik:

• Razor clamming and clam dinners with Joanie and Rod

Click on the arrow to see the video of razor clamming at Deep Creek Beach

 

• Watching the tractors launch the sport fishing charters from the beach

Click on the arrow to see the video to see the tractors launching the boats at Deep Creek Beach

 

• Watching 100’s of eagles on the beach and along the cliffs above the beach

• Beautiful views across Cook Inlet to Mt Redoubt and Mt Illiamna – both still active volcanos

• An old Russian Church from the 1800's

Our next destination is Homer – the southern most port on the Kenai Peninsula. Homer's the halibut fishing capital of the world so we’re hoping to get some fresh halibut to eat while we are there and camp on the Homer Spit with a view of the ocean and the mountains! Fingers crossed!

A most unusual camping experience.....

We traveled the Glenn Highway from Wrangell National Park through the mountains to Wasilla where we celebrated the fourth of July in Sarah Palin's home town– just outside Anchorage. The traffic is getting much heavier and we are seeing LOTS more RVs than we have seen before – summer travel appears to be in full swing in Alaska! It seems that many Alaskans celebrate the fourth of July by camping and riding their 4 wheel ATVs – we’ve never seen so many people pulling a trailer with 4 wheel ATVs on it – at least 2 and sometimes as many as 4 on one trailer!

We celebrated Fourth of July in Sarah Palin’s home town….

We celebrated the fourth of July in Wasilla. They had a good old fashioned home town parade and a picnic afterwards. No sign of Sarah though and as hard as we tried – we couldn’t see Russia from Wasilla ! The weather was about 50 degrees at 11am when the parade started – pretty chilly for the fourth of July! Some of the spectators had on jackets and winter hats while others wore shorts ( just pretending it’s summer)! We still have to turn our heat on at night and have worn jackets almost every day since we left home on May 10! The fireworks shows in Alaska are on July 3rd because they have to wait until after 12 midnight when it’s a little darker – it’s still not dark enough to see them very well though! Amazing the differences from the lower 48!

Our most unusual camping experience yet!

We camped in Portage Valley at a very lovely and quiet campground in the national forest. At least we thought it would be quiet! We took a walk with Molly around the campground only to discover the campground is on a major fault line, in an avalanche zone, right below a mountain with a hanging glacier and bear alert and bear danger signs posted around the campground. Risk takers that we are – we decided to stay anyway!

We stayed four nights without an earthquake or an avalanche but we did have an encounter with a bear!!!

All was peaceful the first night. On our second night all of a sudden we heard several car horns honking simultaneously …then all of a sudden the family in the pop up camper across from us came rushing out of the camper, jumped in their car and drove off. We were wondering what was going on and then we saw the bear…. It was a big black bear that had obviously smelled some really good food around their campsite. We saw the bear walking around the camper and then the bear stood on it’s back legs and looked in the screen window of the camper – just like in a movie! The family must have gone to get the campground manager – he drove up and yelled at the bear – the bear ran off but came back again several more times. Finally the bear left and didn’t come back that night but the family in the pop up didn’t come back either. Thankfully the people and the bear were not harmed – it was so entertaining – who needs a DVD to watch!

The drama wasn’t over yet……

The next night the campground manager and a state trooper drove up to the campsite. The manager knocks at our door and warns us that we may hear gun shots that evening because the state trooper is going to try to lure the bear back to the campsite with food and shoot it. We were so upset – how could they do that to the bear – we’re in his home. Fortunately it started pouring rain and got really windy so the state trooper left – the bear was spared, thank goodness. The next morning we went to the national forest office and talked to the manager, expressing our concern about what was going to happen to the bear. She explained that is was another agency that controls what happens in this type of situation but she agreed to call them and talk to them about possibly relocating the bear instead of shooting it. Well – we don’t know what the outcome will be for the bear but we do know that the state trooper did not come back the next night and the forest service put up a notice at the campground about keeping food in a bear proof container, not in a soft sided camper or tent. So….we hope the bear will have a good, long life deep in the woods somewhere eating salmon and berries!

Highlights of Wasilla/Palmer area:

• Experiencing Fourth of July celebrations in Alaska

• Hatcher Pass and the Independence mine

• Visiting the headquarters for the Iditarod race

Highlights of Portage Valley:

• The bear encounter at the campground

                                         

Click on the arrow to see the bear looking for food at the campsite

• Moose in the campground

• Portage Valley with 6 glaciers visible in the mountains surrounding the valley

• Forest service whistle stop train ride through the back country to Grandview – beautiful scenery

Next stops: The Kenai River – famous for salmon fishing and Ninilchik on the Kenai coast – famous for halibut fishing and razor clamming and also views across Cook Inlet to the active volcanoes – Mt Redoubt and Mt Illiamna….