Haines - Saturday Afternoon to Sunday Afternoon

After dropping my Mountain Boy off back at the campground Chris and I drove out the road towards the ferry terminal, eager to both see what was further out and to scope out yet more potential fishing spots.  The boy is a fishin' fool.

The ferry terminal is about five miles from downtown, and before we reached the terminal we ran into our very first grizzly bear.

We came around a bend and he was leisurely walking down the middle of the road.

We saw him from a few hundred yards back, slowed the car, pulled over to the side of the road and excitedly watched him, all the while me digging my camera out from a side pocket of my pants.

Neither of us had ever seen a grizzzly before, but even from a distance it looked to be an adolescent bear.

As he continued to walk along the center of the road we slowly followed along (careful not to get too close and spook him), until he eventually crossed over the road, and climbed down the embankment out of view.

We pulled the truck over to the side where he had gone out of sight, and I got out of the truck.

I asked Chris to keep an eye open for any other bears that might be around the area, and then walked to the side of the embankment to see if I could see him.

He had decided to take a swim........

He swam for about five minutes, not looking to be trying to find fish.  More like he simply wanted to swim and cool off in the very warm day......

Eventually he pulled out of the water, and I saw him climb up the embankment and back onto the road.  At that point I got back into the truck, and took this picture of him through the rear window as he crossed the road immediately behind us.

And then he simply disappeared into the woods.

Chris and I drove on, smiling and laughing and chattering excitedly about our very unexpected encounter.......

We stopped for a few minutes at another pulloff along the highway, and while my son threw in his rod I had a nice conversation with an elderly lady and her husband who were RVing through Alaska for a few months.

The lady was alarmed that we had seen a bear in the area because she had walked her little windup dog around the same place just the day before.

As two bicycle riders rode by we warned them of our sighting.

The lady also told us that there were a lot of people fishing further out the road at the Chilkoot Lake.

After taking a few pictures we decided to move on and check out the lake.........

Our first impression of the Chilkoot Lake area was that there were a LOT of people fishing - probably 60 or 70 people fishing almost side by side both along the shore and (for those wearing waders) further into the lake.

And then unexpectedly there she was........

I could not believe what I was seeing.  A mother lumbering along the shore and her two very very young bears scampering along beside her.

I was amazed.  Excited.  Enthralled.  This was a sight completely beyond the scope of anything I had seen before in the wild, and it was so incredibly cool......

In addition to a lot of people fishing, there were also a lot of people watching this wonderful family encounter, and more traffic that I wanted to deal with on a visit to small town Alaska.

Chris slowly inched the truck forward while I walked along the side of the road watching these bears play and explore their surroundings. 

Momma was obviously very used to people because she seemed watchful but generally not alarmed at all the commotion she and her two young ones were creating......

Eventually they all wandered into high grass and out of sight, and with traffic almost at a standstill because of slow-movers like us, we decided to move on. 

We continued further down the driveway until we dead-ended, turned around and headed back the way we had come.

As we reached a fence across the width of the lake (meant to slow down the salmon spawning) we noticed that momma was sitting in the water at the fence line (no babies in sight) gorging on a very large salmon.

I tried to take pictures on the move (because traffic was badly backed up at that point and we needed to keep moving) but did not get a good shot of her eating.....

A picture at the turn-around and more pictures taken of the area, on the way back to Haines..... 

We stopped once again to both throw in the line and take pictures, and as Chris was fishing a young couple came down to the area we were at carrying big buckets full of crabs and very large shrimp.

These young people were Canadians (eh) who spend a good deal of time around the Haines area during the summer setting out pots, and then cleaning and freezing their catch.

We had a nice, relaxed and easy-going conversation with these young people before moving on yet again.

My son and my Mountain Boy both have that enviable ability to start up easy conversations with anyone who crosses their path.

It is not an ability that I have - too stand-offish, too guarded.  Unless I consciously make the effort to do such things (which I rarely do), those types of relaxed spur-of-the-moment conversations rarely happen.

My weekend in Haines was unique.  I was around two men where this type of thing is second nature, and I loved being around them because of it.

Again........very cool.......

After more adventure than either one of us had anticipated, we eventually made our way back to town, back to our campground-home-away-from-home, and back to LC.

After excitedly relaying everything we had seen, we drove out to Chilkoot Lake again, to see if the young bear family was still active and close.

They were not.

But the fishing rods were dug out again and I took this picture of my boy at the very end of the road (at the turn-around at the lake).........

More pictures of the lake, the river that feeds into it, and both of my guys fishing some more.......

After eating at the Lighthouse Restaurant later in the evening, we picked up some beer, took them back to the campground and settled down around a very big campfire.

We had other visitors at the campground stop at our fire for varying lengths of time throughout the evening, and again more easy-going conversations with complete strangers. 

Some were from Juneau, some were from the Yukon, and some were from other parts of the world.

Eventually, we settled down around the fire with an interesting (as my son referred to her) hippie-chick from Juneau.  We talked and drank and solved the worlds problems for the next few hours, until after 1am we finally called it a night.

What a great day!

Sunday morning shone bright and blue and warm and wonderful yet again.

My son was toast.  Hungover, tired, unmotivated to go anywhere until he felt better.

So my Mountain Boy and I left him and Jamie sleeping and snoring together in the same bunk bed, and we decided to go for one more drive, and try out luck one more time at seeing grizzly momma and grizzly furball babies.

We stopped briefly at the Hammer Museum (still not open), but we took some more exterior pictures anyway just because it is such a way-cool place.  Next visit I hope to see what is inside, because the outside is wonderfully pretty and creative......

There are just no words to describe this kind of beautiful......

We did indeed find her again.  And we found her babies.......

At noon I tried to call Chris to see if he wanted to go to the street dance and pot luck, but his phone went straight to voice mail.

I thought that it was a shame he was missing out on such a fantastic place on such a fantastic day, but knew that if he did indeed want to go to the dance he would call us, so we could go pick him up at the campground.

We arrived back in town, again excited and running on adrenalin at our long and wonderful encounter with this precious bear family. 

We loved every single minute of our time watching these lovely creatures at the park.  I will never forget that experience.

After finding a parking spot we walked down to where the 100th birthday celebrations were taking place.

And unexpectedly, we ran into my son and Jamie. 

Chris had not walked a dog in a long time, and on this beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon in Haines he walked her the few miles from the campground to downtown.

I was happy to see her wagging tail.  And happy to see his smiling awesome face..........

One last picture of two frolicking baby grizzly bears......