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Alaskan Adventure: an American Family Safari


SafariChick

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@@graceland I have taken the kids to Africa - June 2012, my first Africa trip - we all went to S. Africa including 11 days of safari and loved it! But I do want to take them back! Thanks @@Sangeeta ! Yes @@michael-ibk they really were adorable. @@pedro maia I really enjoyed this trip, I encourage you to try to go, and take your kids!

 

Back to the TR: Here's one more from that morning that I didn't post - a closeup of one of the little cubs that i like:

 

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Solo cub closeup

 

In the afternoon of that first day, it got rainy. We went out to look for the bears again despite the rain. This is when the good raingear really comes in handy. You know the feeling of being on a moving vehicle with the wind rushing at you and making you colder? Well this is compounded with the rain and the fact that there is no roof or sides at all on this cart in which you are riding! When it was raining and windy and we were moving in the vehicle, it could be pretty miserable. And it turned out my rain pants weren't as waterproof as I thought - same for Mr. SC. The tide was up by now so the pattern was they'd be clamming in the morning when the tide was low, and in the meadows in the afternoon when the tide was high. We found one of the mama bears and cubs in the meadows, and got a few pictures, though it was hard to see the cubs well in the tall grass.

 

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Bear in Meadow Slinking

 

Guests walking with their cameras and tripods to the next area that the bears had moved to - you have to be dedicated to lug all this equipment around in the rain!

 

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Photogs wakling with cams

 

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Bear in meadow

 

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Bear with Grass in Mouth

 

After a while, we decided to head back to the cabins and have a nap and warm up before dinner. When we went to dinner later, we were so disappointed to learn that one of the mama bears had come into the area right by the lodge, laid down and nursed her cubs right in front of the lodge - we could have been watching it from the windows of the lodge or just outside had we known! Some of the other guests who were staying in the lodge itself or the cabins closer to it saw out their windows the bear come into camp, and then lie down. There was a group there on a photographic trip together and one of the fellows had just gotten out of the shower and ran out in his long johns, apparently, to video the scene, and showed us the amazing HD video on his laptop. I was kicking myself for not hanging out in the lodge instead of napping! He said he would probably put it on youtube but I haven't found it yet.

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Just two more days to write about. Our second day at SSCL, it was still rainy on and off. We started out the windy morning watching a bear who was mostly lying down on a spit of land a bit far from us. You can see how windy it was as her hair is blowing in the breeze!

 

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Bear lying down in wind

 

Other than looking around occasionally

 

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Bear with seagulls

 

She wasn't doing too much so we left her after a while and moved on. Over in the meadow area, we encountered a beautiful smallish brown bear. She was a subadult with which our guide Brian was familiar as she'd grown up here and he'd seen her for years. He said she had been smaller than her sibling and last year they were worried whether she would survive as she looked kind of sickly. However, she was looking healthy now, although still small for her age (she is about four years old) and was very unconcerned about our being near her.

 

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P1130540

 

After watching her eating for a few minutes, she decided to walk by us towards the beach, and came within 6-7 feet, Brian estimated! You can see the edge of one of our jackets in the right side of the frame as you look at these photos - no zoom.

 

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Blonde walking by us

 

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Well that was exciting!

 

Driving along the beach, we saw this bear with a pretty background walking along

 

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We also saw a couple of eagles, but the photos didn't come out well.

 

We decided to go look over by a creek where the bears sometimes try to catch salmon, but no luck, there were no bears there. However, Here's a photo of me and Mr. SC with Brian, our guide, in the middle

 

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Later, when we were heading back to the Lodge from the beach, we got stuck in a sort of bear jam. There were two bears on the track that we would turn onto to go back to the Lodge, and we couldn't pass them if we turned there, so we had to just sit and observe from the path in the meadow. It seemed one was a mama bear and she was chasing away another female. We decided to leave the vehicle where it was and get out and walk through the meadow to try to observe closer. Later, Brian went back and got the vehicle.

 

Later still, several different bears visited the lodge grounds! Here are a few photos.

 

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This shot shows a bear checking out one of the ATV-pulled carts in which we'd be driven (no one in it at the moment, luckily!)

 

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Towards evening, Brian decided to suggest maybe the girls would like to ride in the little boat, which they did want to do. Mr. SC went with them. I stayed in front of the Lodge to look for bears as there seemed to be quite a few visiting that day. Here they are heading off on their boat ride:

 

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I was glad I stuck around as there was some more bear action on the beach by the Lodge:

 

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including some babies being really cute, but my photos came out kind of blurry in the low light - here's one of the better ones:

 

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cub open mouth

 

All in all, another excellent day.

Edited by SafariChick
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On our last day, we didn't have time to do much bear viewing - we went out for a little drive before breakfast but didn't see much. We were supposed to fly out at 9 a.m. but the plane coming to take us was delayed by weather - there were a lot of clouds and fog and visibility was bad. So we just hung around the Lodge waiting for word that the pilot was coming. We wished we could have gone out to do more looking for bears, but our guide Brian had been turned over to a new group so it wasn't possible. We were quite sad to leave this place, we had such a fun time there. Our pilot finally showed up and I was nervous again as this was the air taxi company that had the accident. The flight was totally smooth and fine so I needn't have worried. We took a few photos out the window of the plane.

 

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IMG_1066

 

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We got back in our rental car that we'd left parked at the little airport in Soldotna in front of the first air taxi company's office for two days (for free - I love these little airports with no red tape!) and set off to drive back to Anchorage. On the agenda was that we really wanted to see a moose. However, try as we might, no moose appeared. Luckily, we were on our way to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center (which was on the outskirts of Anchorage) and we were able to see moose and all kinds of animals there! This is a place with a ton of land in a drop dead gorgeous setting (snow-capped mountains all around) that takes injured or orphaned animals and rehabilitates them, giving them a permanent home if they cannot be returned to the wild. On top of the beautiful setting, there was a little light rain on and off combined with some sun so there were pretty rainbows while we visited. We spent a couple of hours really enjoying this place.

 

They have several bears, both brown and black, and we arrived in time to see their feeding. It was very interesting to see the brown bears compared to the wild ones we'd spent so much time with. There was an enormous male that was part of a sister/brother pair that was just hilarious in all the faces and positions he got into. We got so many fun pictures of him but I'll just post a few. Note: you can see there is a wire fencing between him and us but this was not really like a zoo, these animals had a lot of space to roam around and the animals seemed happy, as far as we could tell - especially this guy!

 

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Conservation Center Bear close up

 

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Happy Bear

 

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We also saw moose (bigger than I realized - they are like the size of a horse!)

 

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Mountains and flowers

 

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Wood bison: these had become extinct in the U.S. but Canada still had some - they lent (or gave?) some to the AK Conservation Center who have successly bred enough that soon they will be released into the wild in Alaska in their former territory! They are 20% bigger than the Plains Bison that are found at Yellowstone.

 

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IMG_1091

 

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Baby musk oxen (soo cute!)

 

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Caribou:

 

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An injured Eagle

 

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I think these were elk? A nursing baby and mother:

 

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and I think this was another musk ox, older:

 

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Here's the link to the best photos from that day in case anyone wants to see some of the other hilarious photos of that big bear. He almost looks drunk in a few of them! This should make a slide show embedded in here, but let's see if it works:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28672638@N05/sets/72157635234007696/with/9595036912/

 

We got to Anchorage in time for a late dinner at a pizza place I'd read about, which was quite good, and then had to dash to the airport and return the rental car and get on our plane. It took a long time to check in at Virgin's desk, even though only a couple of people were ahead of us. When we went to get in line for security, we almost fainted seeing the line - I don't think I"ve ever seen a line this long at any airport for security, it was insane, and we were sure we'd miss our flight! After standing in it for about 15 minutes and barely moving, we were chatting with the woman behind us who used to be a flight attendant. She suggested we might go up and see if we could go through the much shorter line for families. I said well I think that's for people with younger kids (ours being 11 and 14, I felt kind of silly asking!) but she said you might as well just ask. So I decided I would, seeing as our flight was already a midnight flight and I wasn't too excited to sleep in an airport again if we missed it! Luckily the nice woman at the front said no problem, so we got inside way more quickly than we otherwise would have. After that the flight was uneventful. I was sad to leave Alaska, and I'm pretty sure we'll be back some day!

 

This concludes the trip report - hope you enjoyed it!

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Thanks for this exciting trip report - Lake Clark NP looks fantastic and you sure got close to bears!

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Thank you for sharing, I really enjoyed this report. Great bear sightings, I didn´t realize one could get so close to them. (Though I´m not sure I want to get THAT close. B) )

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@@Treepol and @@michael-ibk you're most welcome - glad you enjoyed the report! I don't think, if you'd asked me before the trip whether I wanted to get that close to bears that I'd have said yes, but once in the situation, I trusted the guides' judgment, and also being in the group apparently is a big deterrent of any bear becoming aggressive to people. But their experience has shown that these bears really are habituated to humans by now also. It was a wonderful experience and I'd for sure do it again!

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I lied - TR not quite over. I think I mentioned that there is one other lodge that shares the bear-viewing areas with SSCL. The guides from each of the lodges all know each other and say hello and chat a little when they encounter each other at a bear sighting or in passing. On our second day at SSCL, our vehicle passed one from the other lodge which was going in the opposite direction, and the guides stopped to chat for a minute. The guide from the other lodge told ours that the band the Red Hot Chili Peppers were there! They were doing a gig in Anchorage I think, and they'd come for a day trip. Later we passed a group of guys in raincoats in a vehicle and when we saw the guide from that lodge again, he told us that had been them. We hadn't been sure, it was hard to tell with everyone covered up in rain slickers and hoods. So that was our little brush with celebrity out in the Alaskan wilderness.

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Yes me too! Really good and I have to say I learned a lot about the experience I could expect and what I'd see. Your photos really helped fill in the blanks too.... Great you took the time to step back and put the tourists in the picture so much. Really looks like you had a great time.

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Thanks @@pault - we did have a great time. Some of the putting the tourists in the photo was my husband's idea, I have to give credit where credit is due. I can't remember if I said this before, but I didn't take all these photos - some were taken by him and some were taken by me and some by our 14-year-old - we were all trading the 2 cameras around - of course the 14-year-old takes credit every time we see one of the really good photos from any of our trips, she claims she took it! We thought next trip we ought to institute a policy of every time one of us takes the camera to start using it, we take a photo of ourself first and then we'll know that everything that follows was taken by that person, until the next person grabs it and inserts a photo of themself!

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  • 1 month later...

Looks like I'm a bit late to this TR party, but I had to comment on how much I loved this report. A bear viewing trip to Alaska is on our list and this helps me get a sense of what to expect. Thanks for posting it SafariChick!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm even later to the party!

 

Thanks for transporting me back to Alaska and some familiar places.

 

As for being unlucky with the weather, cold and drizzle is fairly typical. 45 mph winds and rain for 2 straight days--now that is unlucky. Lovely family shots and I spotted the children in the valley. Do people ever tell you that Mr. and Mrs. Safarichick have similar features? If you told me you were blood relatives, I'd believe it.

 

How nice your first bear caught a salmon! That first bear is such a thrill.

 

I’ve spent hours at the King Salmon airport too so I felt your pain.

 

You can make 3:15 am yogurt a unique family tradition while traveling.

 

I remember that tragic flight very well. We still drive the same roads on which there were horrendous car crashes. I’d be a little nervous too.

 

The bear cubs had to be a highlight! Nice shots of those little guys.

 

The final slide show is dark, just so you know.

 

I’m sure you have lots of fun memories to share with your girls from this trip and your timing worked out fine after all.

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@@Atdahl I'm glad you enjoyed it! I enjoyed writing it and reliving it - definitely you should do it! @@Atravelynn I don't think anyone has ever told me and Mr. Safarichick that we look alike, and I don't think so at all! He's tall and thin and I'm short and - well - not thin! But you know they say you start to look more alike as you spend more time together so who knows! The bear cubs were definitely a highlight. I owe a lot to you and your trip report because it gave me a lot of good ideas of what to do so thanks for that!

 

For me the final slide show isn't "dark" - for me it says you've seen all the photos would you like to start again and you can click to start again. @@Game Warden I'm not sure what it shows for you or others?

Edited by SafariChick
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  • 2 weeks later...

@@SafariChick

An even later viewer!

I really enjoyed the report and it is obvious your family enjoyed the trip

I am amazed at how close you get to the bears

Great writing and great pictures

 

Thanks for putting the report together!

Edited by TonyQ
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Glad you enjoyed it @@TonyQ - it was pretty amazing how close we could get! I am sorry you had trouble seeing the slide show, sounds like several people did but I'm not sure what to do to change it. But you edited your post, so perhaps you were able to see it after all.

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@@SafariChick

I did get to see and enjoy it!

(I had to down load a "plug in", whatever that is, but it didn;t take effect until I had closed down and reopened - and then it was fine - so I edited out the comment)

Thanks again

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