A Trip with Rachel, Henry and Nora

I've always wanted to share what I do up here in Southeast Alaska with my family, and I've had a few trips with my brother before, but it is the young kids who I feel can get the most out of a trip up here.  So when my sister Rachel suggested coming up and bringing her kids, I figured it would be a great trip.  Layla was pretty crowded, with four people aboard, but we made do, and we had a great time together.  First up was Taku Harbor, where many other people go, so it wasn't that much of an adventure, but then we went for a hike in Limestone Inlet, where we found three bears across the meadow.  Two were cubs and they were fighting or playing (I got a lot of that during this trip, not just with bears).

We got to try out our new rubber boots:

Then we drove on down to Wood Spit and into Endicott Arm.  It was rainy then so I didn't take many pictures.  It rained on us most of the time, in fact, and now that they have left, it is supposed to be sunny for a whole week straight.  Still, Alaska is wonderful in the rain.  At the entrance to Ford's Terror, the waterfall was thundering down, so we got a nice close view.

And then we went up the river in the east side of Ford's Terror and panned for gold!

More Panning for gold!

After we left Ford's Terror we came back to the entrance to Endicott Arm, and got a tiny bit of sunshine, and paddled around the stranded icebergs that are in the shallow water there.

Then we went into Tracy Arm and anchored in a nice little cove at the entrance and found some Oystercatcher Eggs.  They lay their eggs below the high tide line, so a really high tide will cover the eggs.  Very strange.

Then we went into Tracy Arm.  This was a long day, and we had nice weather for this.  We saw some seals on the icebergs!

And we made it to the South Sawyer Glacier.  It was very icy there and I was pretty busy trying to keep the boat from bumping big ice pieces too hard, especially since the wind was blowing really strongly and there was currents from all directions all the time.  Difficult to navigate in.  Still, we saw a few big pieces fall off and heard the white thunder.

More Baby seals!

Then we went to North Sawyer.  Its actually just called Sawyer glacier, but everyone feels the need to be sure you aren't mistaking the two (south) and so they call it north.  But I digress.  Usually it is not very active.  When I first came up it was much further out and pretty active, but then it became less and less active until last year it was basically just a wall of ice that didn't do anything.  But now it is different.  It seems to have retreated past a moraine shoal, and is calving again.  It means it is retreating extra fast now.  I anchored near the moraine, because it offered some protection from the ice and we canoed in for a closer look.  

Since we are on the beach, the only thing we need to worry about is the wave from big calvings, and being hit by thrown ice.  These are dangers, but not as scary as a shooter, which is a big berg that floats up from underneath with no warning at all and comes popping out of the water like a submarine in an emergency maneuver.  But none of those here!  Solid gravel beneath our feet.  So we played around and took some photos and saw a few nice calvings.

Henry the Ice Man

Nora with Katabatic winds in her hair

Then we went back to Tracy Cove and found some bears in the meadow there.

They let us get really close (from the canoe) and we had a nice time looking at them.

In the morning we found the bears again and got even closer

This one was pretty cool with us being there.  He was always watching us even if it doesn't seem to be that way.

A few times he posed on a rock.  He was pretty skinny.

And we were able to get about 25 ft away from him.

Because of the other bears in the area, he was lowest in rank, and couldn't get the best spots for food.  I think he was a bit sad.

We went back to the Oystercatcher nest and found the owners.

And the eggs again

And then went out to the Midway Islands and found more oystercatchers.  I also saw a puffin there.  A tufted puffin.  I didn't get a good picture though.

The flowers were doing nicely on the island because nobody eats them there.

A pair of Pigeon Guillemots

Then we went to Port Snettisham and hiked up the river there and found some nice muskeg, and some nesting Yellowlegs!

On our way back to Juneau we got a few nice looks at some Humpback Whales lunge feeding

And one popped up right next to us, a nice treat.

It was a nice trip.  I can't wait to do more trips with family and friends, but its nice to have a few days to rest in Juneau, and some sunshine.

A few more photos

I didn't have good internet in Petersburg, so I'll post a little something about my trip from Ketchikan to Petersburg now.  I only took a few days, but I went to an area where I hadn't been to before, the Bradfield canal, which is east of Anan Creek Bear Observatory and has a big river that flows into the fjord.  On my way up, I found a lunge feeding humpback whale...  I love how the ventral pleats expand as they gulp.

When I got to the end of the inlet, there was a big tidal flat and the tide was rising, so I got into the canoe and took the tide in.  There was a young brown bear in the grass that watched me approach.

and I got a few nice shots of him before he wandered off.

Another brown bear in the grass never saw me as I drifted past.  The canoe was low down and the grass ended up being about shoulder height, and since the current was going upstream (rising tide still) I could drift along.  There is a hydro power plant there, that gives power to Ketchikan, Wrangell and Petersburg, so the bears probably had seen people plenty and were accustomed to us.

When I got back to the river part, above the high tide area, there were lots of Alders and the sun shone through the clouds for a moment.  I  really like the colors, but of course the photo doesn't do it justice.

There were a lot of beavers back there as well, and they were munching on the alders.  I went about 5 miles back and then took the current back to the boat as the tide dropped.  Its a pretty nice way to explore, but you have to time it right and you can't hurry.  Also, on the trip to Juneau, I got this picture of a loon, but I forgot to post it.  Normally loons in SE alaska are very shy.  At least the "silver headed" ones; the Pacific Loon, the Arctic Loon and the Red-Throated Loon.  I never see them very close, maybe 100 yards at the closest and then they are gone.  The Yellow-Billed Loon as well, it is very shy.  But this one is a Common Loon, and in a river mouth, in shallow water, and it came right over to me and waited.  I have seen this before with loons in lakes in Canada, where fisherman catch trout and then release them, and the loons scoop them up because the fish are tired.  I assume this was the ploy the loon was plying, but I didn't have any tired fish to release.  

Also, on our trip up to the ridge between Windham and Endicott, I took a picture of Mike and I.

To Juneau

From Thomas Bay onwards, there were lots of cool things to see, but I'm going to put them all into one post.  We explore the west side of Thomas bay, a place I had never been before, and walked over to Dry Bay, which isn't very deep (as you might have guessed) and dries up at low tide.  It has some great beaver ponds and really nice meadows.  The flowers were out.  We also had some sun on us.

You can see the mountains on the east side of the bay pretty well from there too.

From Thomas Bay we went to Farragut Bay.  People live here, there are lots of cabins in the flat, and we met one resident right off the bat, as he was shirtless and on the beach with no boat.  We anchored and paddled in and learned that he had been trying to get to his fishing boat (a nice seiner) and his kayak had sunk under him and he had to swim to shore.  Since nobody comes in the bay very often, maybe once a week or so, he was lucky to have us find him, about two hours after going for a swim.  The bugs were pretty bad and he was getting eaten, but eaten alive!  I can't imagine swimming more than a very short ways in this water.  We dropped him off at his boat and then went for a paddle up the river, and then over to another cabin with two sailboats sitting in front of it.  There, we met the second resident, who was 80 years old, and had been living there for 40 years.  He was a retired aerospace engineer and had a big plot of land that he was protecting, and told us about how the animals were very friendly.  And then we saw some!  A moose and a bear!  So we went a little closer to look.  I'd like to go back and interview him and film it.  I think people with Uncruise would be interested.

From there we were in Fredrick Sound, which is the province of the Whale.  We saw a few.

And then on to Port Houghton.  I love this bay.  We found a porcupine while waiting for the tide at the narrows to the Salt Chuck, and he was on a log, great for photos.

Here he looks like an old man leaning on a walking stick.  I think he might be a wizard.

In the back bay we found a Black Bear munching on some greens.  It was pretty oblivious to our approach, but finally looked up.

Also I found a Red-Headed Sapsucker, drinking the sap from an alder.  It would run its bill up and down the peeled bark area and collect sap.

And a Spotted Sandpiper high steeping through the grass on a log up the river.

From there we went to Windham Bay and hiked up the creek to the old mine site.  There are ruins all over there.  

We climbed and climbed, and up about 3 miles and 2400 ft we got to the top of the ridge.  It was pretty terrible brush but when we got above the trees it was nice.

And we could look down on the other side, on Endicott Arm!

The next day we went over to Endicott Arm by boat and found a bear guarding a dead seal on the beach

And a lot of Ice.  So much ice that we couldn't make it more than halfway up the fjord.  But we did make it to Ford's Terror.

In Ford's Terror there are really high cliffs and lots of waterfalls, so we set about looking at them.

This one is in a cleft that you can barely fit the boat into.

I also found a type of fern I had never seen before.  it has a lot of similarities to a Lady Fern, but it also looks like a sword fern, except the leaves are not as dark.  I've never seen it elsewhere.

From Ford's Terror we went to Port Snettisham.  In there we found a lot of Brown Bears.  Many were ok with our approach and we got pretty close.

These two seemed to be about ready to mate.  There was the larger golden one which was a male and the smaller brown one was female, and they touched a few times.  

How do you tell if a bear is male or female?  Its pretty difficult most of the time, but this bear was showing.  Mostly you see which way they pee.  If its forward, its a male, if its back, its female.