Alaska - Day 2

After eating cereal for breakfast in the warehouse, some last minute gear re-arranging, and one last trip to the bathroom, we loaded our gear onto the trailer and headed to the boat dock to meet Captain Mike. We had chartered Captain Mike's boat to take us to our drop off point in Prince William Sound.

After loading all our gear onto the boat, Captain Mike of Lazy Otter Charters filled up his tanks with fuel and we set-out for Granite Bay. The boat ride out took about an hour to travel the 25 miles to a stone beach just north of Granite Bay. We unloaded our gear and the boat left with Mike's parting phase of something like "see you next week", it began to sink in that we'd just been left on our own - in the wild.

First off Andy and Wendy gave us a gun and bear-spray lesson. These were to be our protection against a bears - which roam freely in these parts. We were each allocated our own personal bear spray to carry with us and were shown how to use the shotgun if it should come to that. Yikes!

After setting up camp in the thick, damp, moss-covered (rain-forest like) woods at the top of the beach, we had some lunch and then set-out in our kayaks to explore the surrounding coast and get the feel of our boats. With bears still on our minds we kept a close eye out as we inspected the foot of streams where they where likely to be hunting for fish. Several hours later and by the time we'd made it into Granite Bay, I'd just about forgotten about the bears, and it was at this point that we had the first bear sighting! It was seen by all except Erin and I as by the time we'd caught up, it had left the waters edge for the woods. Brad described the sighting something like this: "I looked over to the shore and saw a shadow that shouldn't have been there, then the shadow moved!" Exciting stuff.

But this paddle wasn't over yet. On the way back to camp, we saw yet another bear! This one was spotted by Brad and was seen by Erin and I. It was a safe distance off, in a meadow on a hill (see photos below and click on it for larger version). Erin said "You see that black spot on that hill, that's a bear." Never-the-less, we kept a good distance from shore until he (or she) disappeared over a crest. Meanwhile Andy had caught a fish and was heading back to camp with it stuffed somewhere in his kayak. I had an opportunity to photograph some jelly fish, before we all returned to camp to cook some dinner on the camping stove.

I must have been tired that evening, because I don't remember much else, apart from trying not worry about the bears that where roaming around in the thick dark woodland close by...

You can see more photos from Day 2 on Flickr. And here's a map showing our location and paddling track for this day. It's best viewed in Google Earth or full screen in Google Maps (link opens in a new window).