Bearable Lightness of Being

Bears, bears, and more bears.   After a nice chili & eggs breakfast we dropped the tender and scooted the 6 miles to the Anan Bear Observatory.   

Oddly, at Anan, there is a dinghy dock, but it does not connect to land, so you can't get from the dock to land; I'm unsure of its purpose.  We went up the river at extreme low tide for about 100 yards and beached Roe.   As the tide was coming up at the rate of about 3' per hour, we had to deploy our "Anchor Buddy" and a long painter to a stake set well up above the tide marks.   The painter is the line that goes from the front of the tender to a dock, land, or whatever.  Good thing we thought this through and brought our foul weather boots as we had to hop overboard and wade (ankle deep) to the rough, rocky beach.

Hiking up the beach to the ranger's shelter we had to mind the significant piles of bear scat.  I guess they really do have very healthy bears here or really good scat props!   Once checked-in and having gone through a brief orientation with a young Park Ranger we were allowed to continue on and hike the 1/2 mile to the observatory.

Note that if you run into a bear... Don't panic, don't run, bunch together and look large, stare the bear down, make noise, etc.  In theory, the bear will defer to us and move off the path enough so we can continue.   I was voluntold that I was to sacrifice myself for the good of the family, should that be necessary.   It sucks being the old slow one...

This is not a zoo.   There are no fences.   Just us standing by the observatory railing overlooking the river and bear feeding area.  The bears use the trails just like we do.   They also walk right up to the observatory and observe us observing them.

Once at the observatory, we saw bears.   Lots of bears fishing, eating, fishing, eating, etc.   All in, I'd guess maybe 12-14 bears, all black bears, no brown or grizzly today.   Watching them fish was fascinating.   The old pros just waded in, nabbed a fish and were back out eating within seconds.   The younger and less skilled bears took 3-5 minutes to get a fish - and the fish were thick in the little river.

Good thing for me that the bear prefer salmon over some well marbled chicken-like tasting person.

Here are a bunch of bear pictures.

 Note the momma and her baby bears.

A quick hike back to the beach with only one bear resting besides, but not on the trail.   Back into Roe and we were off.  The winds had picked up a bit and were blowing 15 knots up the channel, so we had a very bumpy ride back.   Why does the water always look flat in pictures?

We were back aboard Blue Redd about 1330 (1:30 pm) and on our way to Meyers Chuck for the night, 33 miles to the southwest.   And it's Mexi-Friday on the back deck!   Picture is of the aftermath.

Here are a few pictures of tonight's sunset in Meyers Chuck.   The bottom picture is courtesy of Ross.

And we ordered more cinnamon rolls from Cassy!   They were so good last time, we needed more.