Airship Goes to Alaska
It was gray and rainy this morning at our Leesoffskaia Bay anchorage. We thought we'd head around the corner to Camp Coogan Bay to anchor for the night (because new place!) but first we thought we'd do a little exploring (and maybe some fishing) on the way.
There were a ton of fishing boats out today:
Here's a map of our route. You can see where we started in Leesoffskaia Bay and where we ended up right next door in Camp Coogan Bay, with a cruise in and out of Silver Bay and some fishing in between:
As soon as we got near the head of Camp Coogan Bay, Tiffani (expert bear spotter) spotted a brown bear on the shore. The good anchorage area was pretty crowded with crab traps, but we managed to find a spot that was both far enough from shore (even shore at low tide) and far enough from any traps. We were motivated to anchor here because…bears! Right there!
We watched bears pretty solidly all afternoon, more in the evening (there were two or three roaming around eating grass and turning over rocks). There were also deer…probably 10 or so at one point…grazing near the bears. They didn't seem to mind each other.
Photo without bears:
Brown bear and bald eagle in the same photo:
Two brown bears in one photo:
One brown bear, two deer:
Kevin took the drone over to shore and got some great aerial footage of one of the bears. The bear maybe heard the drone once or twice, but never saw it and didn't seem to be bothered enough to stop eating for more than a second or two. Tiffani and I watched with binoculars. Here's the video:
Looking out the other way, which we did once or twice when we were not watching bears:
In the morning, I got up and looked out toward the meadow. Tiffani asked "Are there still bears?"
Yep, still bears:
Low tide this morning put us quite a bit closer to the bears:
It was a beautiful day, so we headed out to fish for a bit before going into Sitka (Mt. Edgecumbe in the background).
We were not the only ones:
We didn't catch anything, but it was such a great day to be out on the water that we didn't much care. Next stop, Sitka!
Oh yeah, and here's our route from Camp Coogan Bay, to fishing, to Sitka:
