Welcome to this weeks edition of travel Tuesday, where I am sharing the trip my mom and I took to Alaska in August. This week's title should be the bear hunt that wasn't. One of my dreams had been to see the brown bears. What better place than near Hoonah, which has the highest density of bears in the world at 1.7 per square mile. However, with our luck (and in part because of tourists on ATVs and side by sides) we didn't see one. No seeing the bears has made a great story, and gives me a reason to go back some day. And while we didn't see bears, we still got to enjoy the beauty of Alaska.
Our guide for the day was Dale, a local, former marine who is now in law school. He is 1/4 Tlingit and we had a lovely discussion about native life and life in the wilderness in general. Fun fact, the Tlingit people were the last peoples to hold slaves in the United States and only stopped having them in the 1920s.
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| Our guide - listening for bears |
Dale clearly had mixed feelings about the cruise ship industry taking hold of his community. One of his first concerns was Hoonah, located Chichagof Island, doesn't get its real name. It is called Icy Straight. So out of respect for the inhabitants of the area, I will refer to it as Hoonah. This town of about 700, 1300 in the summer, more than triples in size ever time a cruise ship arrives. We tourists really need to remember the impact our visiting has on these communities.
To be known by the proper name Hoonah
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| I thought this was a cool pier |
Join us as we head out to not see bears!
These are the roads we drove on
Our first stop was to a flat, where we spent quite some time standing quietly waiting.
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| We did get to spend some time with this lovely eagle |
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| Me not seeing bears, but still having fun! |
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| The salmon ran late this year |
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| The bears generally just eat the skin of the fish. It has more of what they need to bulk up for the winter. |
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| Fresh poop! |
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| Black tailed deer |
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| This sort of thing took my breathe away! |
While on one hand the day was a bit disappointing, on the other it was wonderful. We were able to enjoy the peaceful nature of this small community.
Come back next week for another glacier!
its beautiful and I know you enjoyed NOT seeing the bears, LOL... any excuse for another cruise, that works. we fuss about tourists here and there are a lot more of us here and a lot more visitors, but without them, children would go hungry. tourists keep the city running. we have 3000 in just oneof our highschools, so not feeling the pain of this small town visitors. I do believe tourist need to take care of the enviroment and play nice, but they don't.
ReplyDeleteGail agrees that not seeing bears can result in seeing lots of other wonderful wildlife and scenery. She once spent two utterly wonderful weeks in Glacier and the adjacent Waterton Lakes National Parks and, while backpacking out in the wilds, did not see a single bear. She did see moose, elk, skunks, mountain goats and much other wildlife (notably biting insects). Later they did see several bears, strolling along beside the main highway as she and her friends droves past in the hire car!
ReplyDeleteWhat beautiful scenery you were treated to. It's too bad you only saw what the bears left behind and not the bears themselves.
ReplyDeleteThere were so many places in Alaska that are truly breathtaking....A mountain ANYWHERE instantly lowers my BP. But Alaska's are the best. Did Dale exam in the poop to tell you what the bear ate for breakfast? LOL
ReplyDeleteI wanted to see a whale...we were too early so that gives me reason to return...
Good luck at the vet Hailey
Hugs cecilia
Hari OM
ReplyDeleteoutstanding scenery, getting properly familiar with locale, breathing truly fresh air... one can live not seeing bear! Yeah, double-edged chainsaw, the tourism industry... YAM xx
Alaska scenery is just gorgeous!
ReplyDeleteSo beautiful... Thanks for sharing.
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