Today was our first full day at Brooks Camp (not to mention it was an exciting one)! After we ate a great breakfast, we decided it was a good idea to go fishing for Red Salmon (Sockeye). My dad caught about a 9-pounder, which he let me reel in, and after that I caught a 8 pounder and then a 5 pounder...by myself! did I mention that we were chased off of our fishing spot FOUR different times by bears? Okay, okay...not chased literally, but the bears would get close to the spot we fished at (called the spit) so we'd have to move back to maintain the 50-yd distance. Now I can say I've fished with bears! After dinner, we headed up to the waterfalls for the second time that day. I forgot to say we had our first unexpected bear encounter on the road back to the campgrounds. We were walking along and suddenly there was a big bear about 45 yards away coming towards us. We said "Hey bear." (they told us to do that in the informative video) and she went on her way across the road. We started walking again, but the ranger at the platform yelled for us to turn around. Just then another big bear made its way across the road! Alaska is exciting. On our way back from the falls on our second trip, we had three...and a half...more bear encounters. I should mention that the hike to the falls is totally wild. It's just you and the bears in the woods for about a mile and a half! As we left the platform to head back to camp, there was a huge boar right ahead of us. We waited for him to cross, and made our way on past...until he decided to turn around and come back. We stopped and waited for him to cross again. Once we finally passed him, he was just sitting in the woods watching us walk by! It was awesome. Then we took about 60 steps and ran into a blond sow. We figured they were the two "love birds...or shall I say bears." They had been mating earlier at the falls. He was following her through the woods, and she was leading him on. Typical girl! Then we made it down the trail to the road. We only got held up once by a bear on the road. It went on its merry way once we saw it. And finally, we made it back to camp! All in all, it was an amazing day filled with awesome adventures. I can't wait to see what tomorrow holds!
The Lodge is where we ate every meal and the place with the tent sign at the top is the campground we slept in. You'll see the Naknek Lake and we fished right next to the little bridge across from the Lower River Platform. We took the Brooks Falls Trail to the waterfalls to bear view. That's where we had a lot of bear encounters because not only is it a human trail, but it's mainly a bear trail!
The point from where we fished!
This was our dinner for one night.
The "love bears" that we ran into on the trail.
This was one of the platforms by where we fished.
My favorite shot from the falls on this day!
I love this! I've always had a fascination for bears (and sheep-weird). What an amazing vacation! That last shot of the jumping bear is incredible. I can't wait to see what happened next. So glad you're blogging!
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