Days 10 July 13, 2022

Before leaving the room, John and I decided to take a shower at the Hilton thinking we’d have a better showering experience there than in the primitive showers we expected to find in the cabins at Brook’s Falls. John got up really early as he is wont to do and showered then. I got up a couple of hours later and showered. Unfortunately, my shower never received enough hot water to make the water not freezing cold. I stood naked in that bathroom and ran the water for at least 10 minutes. I even turned the hot water on in the sink trying to get something resembling even warm. It never got warmer. Well, shit. I took a very chilly, very short shower and didn’t enjoy it at all, but at least I was clean.

Breakfast

The day before Tom had given us tickets for the breakfast buffet, which was quite nice. They even had a guy there making omelets. John got one and I should have because their scrambled eggs were simply not edible. The rest of my breakfast was good with bacon and a toasted English muffin.

We went back to the room to get our luggage and after checking the room to be sure we had not left anything, we grabbed our luggage and hauled it all back downstairs. I carried the walking sticks to give to Tom who said he’d put them in the duffle bag he was taking to the Falls. They fit easily and that made me happy. Tom gave us tags to label our 22-inch bags that were left at the hotel and we put those on. The bellhops put everyone’s left-behind bags on one cart and hauled them off to their luggage room. We took what we were taking to the Falls with us and met the bus on the street outside.

Goodbye Hilton, Hello Kincaid Park

Our flight out of Anchorage to King Salmon left around 11 a.m., so the tour had to fill our time between breakfast and the flight. I agreed that sitting in the airport for four hours was not something I’d enjoy. Therefore, the bus took us to Kincaid Park. This is what Google says about it:

The Tony Knowles Coastal Trail follows the shore of Cook Inlet from Downtown Anchorage to Kincaid Park.

Thank goodness John took a picture at the trailhead or I’d have no idea where we had been.

The Fitbit says that on this day I did 17,245 steps. It started with this trail. It was an easy trail, paved even. I brought my poles but really didn’t need them since it was a civilized trail.

We walked down to where we could see Cook Inlet. Below us was a mud flat with lots of tracks in the mud. Even this close to Anchorage there are moose and bears as evidenced by the tracks in the mud.

It’s pretty clear in the picture that there are moose tracks. The bear tracks are less obvious in the picture, but we could see bear tracks, too. From the mud flats, we walked back to where we had started. At the top of the trail was an education center. When we arrived, it looked like some school kids were having a day camp there. We walked through them back to our bus.

The bus ride to the airport

At most airports, there is the commercial side of it where you catch your airline to most places and then there is the side of the airport where private planes take people and cargo from one place to another. We went to the private plane’s side of the airport and got there about an hour or so before we needed to board. Tom realized we were missing lunch. To compensate, he brought granola bars, dried fruit, and nuts to keep us from getting hungry. No one wants a hangry tour group. I certainly appreciated that and took advantage of his snacks.

We put our luggage on a scale (remember the 35-pound rule) and then each person got on the scale with their carry-on bags. For me, that was just our little backpack. They put my backpack with all the other bags on a luggage cart and rolled it outside. Evidently, it wasn’t going to be a carry-on after all. They’d put it all on the plane when it got there.

We had some time to kill, so I found the restroom and a shop that sold the stuff that they sell in airports. I’d lost my lip balm somewhere along the way, so I bought a Burt’s Bees lip balm at the shop. I was all set. We ate Tom’s snacks while waiting for the airplane to get there. This is us deplaning at King Salmon from our plane. We thought it was small at the time. But wait it gets smaller.

Flight to King Salmon

The hanger we flew from in Anchorage looked like this.

I don’t remember how long the flight was, but it wasn’t terribly long. An hour maybe.  We landed on a little strip. It was so small there were no taxiing runways. The pilot landed and turned the plane around to take us to the terminal. It was a very nice-looking terminal.

I suspect that they get some monied people there to go salmon fishing and they want to look respectable.

We went from the terminal to that little shuttle bus that took us to the seaplane that we were going to ride to Brooks Falls. This is us getting on the even smaller seaplane.

Seaplane to Katmai National Park

On the first flight on the bigger plane, there were people we didn’t know on the plane. On this one, it was just our little party of eight. Again, I have no memory of how long it took to get there. Perceptually, it wasn’t too long. I read while we were on the airplane, so I was happy. The other fortunate thing that happened was that I was looking through the pocket in the seat in front of me on the first plane. I found the plastic bag with an airsick bag (luckily no one needed that) and in the same bag was a little packet of earplugs. I did take advantage of those. The drone of the engines is as annoying as a bumpy ride. I was glad to have them on both airplanes.

To deplane from the seaplane, we walked across a board they placed from the plane’s pontoon to the beach. Yes, it was getting more primitive. From there, we walked to the main buildings of the park. The pilot and co-pilot got our luggage out and put it in front of the main lodge for us to pick up later

Bear in camp!

The first thing we had to do before we could go bear sight-seeing was to attend Park-Ranger-led bear school. While waiting to go to bear school, we were standing on a trail that ran through the camp. Suddenly two rangers trotted through camp yelling for everyone to get up by the buildings. No sooner had we moved up against the building when two bears ran through the camp on the trail where we’d been standing. Well, hello, bear! Without even thinking about it, I grabbed Tom’s arm because it was convenient. Sheesh. Well, you came here to see bears. Who knew it would be so soon or so close?

Bear school

At bear school, we were told to stay 50 yards away from any bear even if you have to go off the trail and into the woods. Oh, fun. We were also warned to never have any food on us when we were walking the trail to Brooks Falls or even in camp walking between buildings. Inside the dining hall, there were signs saying not to take any food outside the building. It was okay to have food in the cabin, they just worry about you walking around with it.

People who took a day trip to the Falls and brought in their own food were advised to leave the food in a special bear-proofed cabin with big locks on it. If you weren’t going to eat in their dining hall, they had a fenced-in picnic area they suggested you eat in. All to keep the bears from trying to get your food and hurting you in the process

Once bear school was over, we were all given silver pins and told to wear them at all times when outside the cabin. They wanted to be sure that everyone there had been warned of the dangers of hanging out with bears. They convinced me.

Cabins

It is hard to see from the picture that there is room in the cabins for four people. Tom assigned us to a cabin with Cathy and Karen and I didn’t mind. At least I knew them. The open door on the left is the room we shared with Cathy and Karen.

However, because we were such a shrunken group the other couple had their own cabin, and so did Tom and so did Krista. I understood why he assigned them the way he did, but our cabin was crowded. We had electricity in the cabin, thank goodness. We had decided to bring the power cord to John’s fan just in case and then evidently never packed it. That was a bummer, most annoying because we’d decided to pack it and then didn’t do it.

Late lunch

After bear school, we ate lunch at 2 p.m. Hot lunch was over but they were still serving soup and salad. I had some lentil soup with some hard lentils in it. The broth tasted pretty good, but I wasn’t sure about the texture of the beans. Are lentils supposed to be hard? I thought the salad looked pretty wilted, so I passed on that.

We unpacked our luggage that had been delivered to the cabin, not that there was a lot of unpacking to do, and waited for dinner, which was served in the dining hall. It was a buffet and was really quite good for a cafeteria-style dining outfit.

Bear sight-seeing

Finally, after dinner, we went to see the bears. Tom took our group out to the observation decks. To get to the observation deck, you walk along a raised boardwalk over the water, then get to a trail. They want you to keep moving on the boardwalk because they don’t want the bears to ever be spooked by people on the boardwalk. The idea is that the bears should feel comfortable walking under it. As we are walking along the trail and over the lake, we saw a mamma bear with four cubs. Four cubs! That’s too many. A mamma bear trying to feed two has a difficult time. I cannot imagine her trying to feed four cubs and herself and making it through winter hibernation. This picture doesn’t show the four of them well, but I promise there were four.

Once you get past the lake, you have to walk through the woods on a trail to get to more boardwalks built over the forest. It is 1.2 miles round trip from the camp to the Falls and back. Finally, you get to the fenced-in part of the trail. There are two gates, a shorter gate beyond a big gate. They ask that you be sure the gates are closed. You do not want to meet a bear on this narrow strip of boardwalk with nowhere for either of you to go.

Observation Decks

The boardwalk divides into two going to two observation decks, the upper and the lower one. The lower deck is closer to the bears and the number of people on that deck is regulated. They let something like 40 people on the lower deck and then start giving people tickets with times on them to return. You can go back to camp or hang out waiting on the upper deck.

We were fortunate to never had to wait. Each time we went out to the decks there was no one regulating how many people were out there. The first time we went out to the lower observation deck there were so many bears. John counted 38 bears from the falls all the way down to the lake.

That picture is just the Falls part of the river. Scanning to the right was more river and more bears. We stood on the lower deck for an hour and watched the bears fish for salmon. Tom told us that the big guy bears who are at the top of the food chain eat just the brains and the skin of the salmon because in a salmon that is where the most fat is stored and therefore the most calories.

We stood there and watched those bears bite off the heads and then rip the skin off fish after fish, sometimes while it was still flapping, and then let the rest of the body float downstream. The lower in the hierarchy bears and birds would eat the leftover fish. The lower river was littered with half-eaten salmon bodies with gulls and bears standing over them feasting. After about an hour of watching this carnage, I was really tired and several of us went back to the cabins.

End of the day

From the hiking in the morning to the hike to Brookes Falls, my knee was really hurting, so John and I detoured from the group who were going to the cabins and instead went to the dining hall. Just inside the front door was a bar. I asked the bartender if he could put some ice in a bag for me for my knee. He said he knew just what to do for me. Off to the kitchen he went and came back out with a zip-lock bag full of chipped ice. Perfect!

When we got to the cabin and before collapsing, I took two extra-strength Tylenol. I grabbed a hand towel, took off my hiking boots and pants, and crawled into the lower bunk of the bed. I put the hand towel over my bare skin and put the ice on it. Ah, that was better. I was exhausted. Usually, when we have bunk beds because I’m smaller, I sleep on top, but since I was kind of situated and hurting, John slept up top that night. I really appreciated that. I did get up to brush my teeth and get my bite guard, then went to bed for good.

Thus, endth Day 10.

We must add to our modes of transportation list:

1. Jet plane
2. Small shuttle bus
3. Tourist bus
4. Alaska train (and spur train)
5. Ski plane
6. Rubber raft
7. Tour boat
8. Kayak
9. Private tour boat
10. Turbo-prop jet plane
11. Pontoon seaplane

Yes, Tom was right. On this trip, we used more than 10 modes of transportation. When we left Brooks Falls, we’d just be riding those same types of planes back to Anchorage.

Day 11 was eagles, and salmon, and bears, oh my!

Day 10 July 13 Fitbit Data: 17,245 steps, 6.85 miles, 1944 calories, 21 floors, 105 active minutes