We also saw a Grizzly! First time I’ve ever seen a bear in the wild. Plenty far away to not be scary and so cool.
Next was a stop at the Russian River. The goal was to see a bear fishing for salmon, but we only saw humans fishing for salmon. Crazy how red the sockeye salmon are, definitely not camouflaged swimming in the glacier clear water.
We’ve also turned into bit of birders (guess we hit the age). I mean, Kevin even has a tracking app so we can identify them š¤£. Lots of seagulls and some bald eagles. The stars of the show though was the beautiful (and huge) Golden Eagle and then the Red Breasted Merganser mama and the Harlequin Duck mama with their babies. Soooo cute.
As an added bonus, you can literally hear the seagull saying ‘MINE’ in this picture. Minutes later the brave guy actually stole the salmon from the eagle.
To end our animal search, we wandered Lowell Point as we heard rumors we could find sea otters there and we were not disappointed. Lots of them with two lil guys play wrestling.
Now dinner was a highly anticipated Thai place I found that had bacon pineapple fried rice. Is it real Thai? Probably not. Was it one of the best fried rice I’ve ever had? 12/10.Ā
After we had been served, a young girl sat in the table behind us obviously distraught from the start, and we were not prepared for the story we were about to hear (she was calling her mom but was pretty hysterical so I could hear her).
Girl set off this morning to go on a highly anticipated solo hike up a mountain – I missed the name but thinking it was Marathon Mountain. She made it about 3/4 up without major incident, but that last fourth was traumatic. She went to walk over to the ridge and ended up losing her footing and slid down. Now any fall on a mountain isn’t fun and while it could have been a foot she fell, it could feel like 50 feet. Mountains up here are steep and she was above the snowline, so it was also slick and snow packed. So it was really scary free falling like that.Ā
She tried to get back up and go back up but was so shaken from the fall (and getting passed by so many people) that she ended up just making her way back down so she didn’t miss her shuttle. She realized about halfway down that in the fall she had lost her bear spray that she had borrowed from the lodge she was staying at, and had to decide if she went back up to find it or make her shuttle. As a solo traveller in bear country that spray is definitely a peace of mind safety net. She chose the latter and still ended up missing the shuttle.Ā
No cell service on the mountain and she was at least 20 min drive to Seward. She approached a tour bus and they couldn’t allow her on the bus. So she had to hitchhike back to town with strangers. Then find an ATM so she could pay the lodge for the lost spray. As a 20 something travelling alone, that is a lot of trauma wrapped up in a day.
Anyways, as we were leaving, I looked back and she just looked so defeated eating her soup. So we asked the waitress to add her dinner to our tab, so maybe she can have some light in her traumatic day.Ā Hopefully she isn’t discouraged from solo travelling again.Ā
Early morning tomorrow for our rescheduled glacier cruise.
Animals we came to see:
Grizzly Bear – ā
Moose – āļø
Bald Eagle – ā
ā
Puffin – āļø
Whales – āļø
Animals we did not consider we would see:
Sea otters – ā
ā
Golden Eagle – ā
Sockeye Red Salmon – ā
Red Breasted Merganser (and babies!) – ā
Harlequin Duck (and babies!) – ā
