On the way into Wrangell I managed to get through to the US Forest Service and obtain passes to the Anan bear observatory. Sixty people a day are allowed into the observatory. Fifty-two are usually snapped up by the jet boat tour operators months in advance as soon as they become available on the Internet. The remaining 8 are sold 3 days in advance on a first-come-first-served basis starting at 8:00 in the morning. Yesterday I didn’t get in range of a cell tower until 9:00 and, much to my surprise, there were still two passes available for July 21. Given the steady drizzle and our need to plan for arrival at Anan, we stayed at Wrangell for the past two days, mostly hanging out at the library doing computer work.
This morning we departed Wrangell in fog and a moderately heavy rain and dropped the anchor at Thom’s Place; a spot we stayed at on the way north and really liked. Given our good luck with crabs on our first visit, I put out two crab traps with every expectation of catching my limit. Unfortunately, it appears that a commercial crab boat was in the bay – I caught about 50 crabs and not one was legal—either females or undersized males.
In the evening the weather front passed, the sky turned blue, and everything was beautiful.
July 21, 2011, Thursday
The weather gods were good to us – warm and sunny all day. We arrived at Anan about 10:30 and anchored reasonably close to shore. As luck would have it, only a few other visitors were there. We got our safety briefing and then walked the half mile of mostly boardwalk to the viewing site. Most of the time we were singing the “Children’s Marching Song” or simply saying “yo bear” in a loud voice. Bears are used to people but you still don’t want to surprise them, especially a mother with a cub.
About 200 feet from the viewing site we encountered a bear on the boardwalk. Talking nicely to the bear we backed off the boardwalk. We got a little antsy as it started walking towards us but, fortunately, it walked off the trail into the woods about 30 – 40 feet from us. We still had to wait another 5 minutes for a second bear to get off the boardwalk. We spent the next 4 hours madly taking pictures and really enjoying the sights. Between the two of us, Linda and I took about 600 pictures.
Bears wandered all around the viewing area. Sometimes we would see as many as 6 or 8 at a time. At the viewing area bears were sometimes so close that I could have reached out and touched them. The only thing separating us from wandering bears was a 3 ½ foot high 2x4 fence which the bears could have easily crawled over.
Brown bears are what you typically see on TV shows depicting bears feeding on salmon. Brown bears are animals of open spaces while black bears inhabit the forest. Anan creek and lake is heavily forested so most of the bears are black. Apparently two brown bears with cubs occasionally come by to feed but we didn’t see them today.
During our last hour several jet boats showed up with hoards of other tourists. We’re glad we got there reasonably early.
Anan was certainly one of the highlights of our cruise. Hopefully we’ll get to come back.
Departing Anan we continued south and spent the night comfortably anchored in Santa Anna Inlet.
July 22, 2011, Friday
Given that we only planned on traveling about 25 miles today, we slept in till, maybe, 7:00, had a leisurely breakfast then headed out. When we left Santa Anna Inlet it was calm, overcast, and visibility was reduced to about a mile due to fog. The plan was to stay at Meyer’s Chuck which is close to the half way point on the journey to Ketchikan.
Not long after departing Santa Anna Inlet we ran into a pod of Dahl’s porpoises. While on the bow to enjoy them, we could we could see other porpoises charging Hobbit from all directions. In a few minutes on the order of 40 had joined us and were madly dancing too and fro in front of our bow. The action was really exciting and could only be adequately captured with a movie camera which, unfortunately, we didn’t have.
As we headed down Ernest Sound, the wind remained calm, but we started getting wind waves which slowly increased in size as we approached Clarence Strait – a really big body of water. As we got closer to Clarence Strait the wind started picking up and we could see that the Strait was frothy with white-caps indicating to me that the wind was at least 20 kts. The waves kept building until they were in the 4 foot range and Hobbit was taking spray over the bow. Only about 2 miles from our destination we turned around rather than let the large waves hit us on the beam as we turned south in Clarence Strait. We radioed a sailboat we saw in the Strait and learned that they were taking waves to 6 feet.
We ended up backtracking about 8 miles and anchoring in Vixen Inlet which appears to have really good holding but only fair relief from the wind. As I write this wind is in the 15 – 20 kt range gusting 26.
Large Pod of Dahl’s Porpoises
Sunset at Vixen Inlet
July 23, 2011, Saturday
What a difference a day makes. Yesterday it was blowing hard and the wind waves forced us to beat a retreat to a marginal anchorage. Today it was calm and, while the water wasn’t totally flat, it was generally a smooth ride. It is somewhat amazing that as we entered Chatham Strait we started picking up long-period swells from the ocean (Dixon Entrance). Dixon Entrance is just over 50 miles away.
Anyway, the most eventful part of the day was another visit by Dahl’s porpoises. Just a small pod but fun to watch ride our bow nevertheless. In Ketchikan we walked around town and visited “Creek Street”. On Creek Street all of the buildings are on pilings and a creek that salmon use on their way to spawn is the street. Creek Street was the wild part of town and included possibly the last operating brothel in Alaska.
Dolly’s House of Ill Repute
Creek Street
No comments:
Post a Comment