Sleeping with Grizzly’s
The RV park we stayed in closes today, the owners bug out on the first ‘cheap’ ferry fare.
Spent the day pottering about Haines township, which is about 20 small shops. Met some nice folk, especially Alaska Rod the knife maker and his wife Ronda. I had had previous discussions with the Chief of Police here so Josh and I popped down to see Gary while Linda and Tayla hit the shops. There is a nice quilt shop here in Haines.
After an enjoyable ice cream at the ‘Hungry Moose’ one of those small boxes of a shop on the side of the road that does drive-thru coffee’s, we headed out for our campsite at the Chilkoot State Rec Park, and where we had seen the Grizzly yesterday.
As we went through the fish trap, no bears, so parked up and walked back, a bit further than we thought, but we were not disappointed, as there was a sow and two 2 yr old cubs on the far side of the creek, then we walked down some more and stood on the side of the road. A couple of minutes later another sow and two first year cubs came down the embankment just beside us and walked down the road a little (away from us, thank goodness) and then played and fished in the water. They did surprise us and being on foot, it was an interesting short period. We watched them for quite a while when another two bears came along.
Soon after that another sow came down with three first year cubs and they were full of action. So for two hours we watched and walked and followed all these bears.
Upon returning toward the RV, not expecting any other action, the sow with the two cubs who had left the creek earlier, having walked up through the forest, came back down to the creek beside our RV. Linda and Tayla were walking way ahead, so Josh and I called out to them. They saw the sow, not knowing who she was and walked up to us. The sow was out swimming and bobbing for salmon in the middle of the creek and Linda was not aware that the way she was walking up to us, she was right on top of the cubs, just down below her and behind some light scrub. When one of them moved by having a small spat with the other and some growls, both Linda and Tayla got a surprise, the sow got grumpy and started huffing, and the cubs got the message from mum and they moved along toward her and she started swimming back toward the shore. We decided to move a little bit them everything settled down. We spent another hour watching these three and the light got low and the bears headed off back into the forest.
This was an awesome experience, we counted 9 bears in all, and the last encounter was the closest, it was awesome. Add to this, as we were watching the bears, there was an Avalanche just off the the side of us, it sounded like the biggest thunder storm right over our head, and when we walked around the corner we saw where the slide was, on the other side of the creek, up fairly high, it was awesome.
Have a look at some of the 525 photo’s I took, Josh also took some video.
We can’t head out of Haines until Thursday 16th, that is the next Ferry, so have booked on it to Skagway. So, some hiking and relaxing is now in order.
We missed the Northern Lights last night, apparently 3 hours of them from 10am, we camped in the dense forest among the bears, so tonight we’ll be out looking as going to a different state park on the other side of town.
Weather – very hot, low 70’s.
Wildlife : Grizzlies, Bald Eagles, Red Squirrells.
O/N couldn’t get a true reading, will update this later. Haines.
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