Juneau, and Admiralty Island 7-19-2018

I arrived in Juneau just after noon on July 18.  Caitlyn picked me up, and we headed over to Caitlyn's office.  This is the view from her desk. 

 This is the view from Caitlyn's balcony at home.  There is this huge rock, (I'll do another post on just the rock), but this seal is not actually floating on water, but hanging out on Caitlyn's rock.

For this evening's entertainment, we went to "trivia night." Caitlyn's team tied for first place!

 I love watching the cruise ships come in and out!  Check out how much the tide has changed from the picture of the seal, to the cruise ship, and that was a difference of less than 4 hours.  Also, the picture below was taken at 10 pm.  It's still pretty light outside!

...and the next morning, the cruise ships come in!  Coolest thing ever to watch!

Thursday, July 19, we are heading out to Admiralty Island.  Admiralty is "home to the highest density of brown bears in North America".  There are approximately 1600 brown bears on this island.

 On our way to the airport, there were four bald eagles on the same lamp post.  That's the most I've seen on one post!

 We took a float plane out to the island.  I love to fly, and these little float planes are my favorite!  They land much smoother that planes with wheels.

We get dropped off, and the plane heads back to Juneau.  We are only spending the day on this island, so they will be back to get us around 3 pm.

We were supposed to be greeted by a forest ranger, and he explains how to act around the bears, and all the stuff that would come in handy when you are surrounded by bears...the only problem was, there were bears on the beach where we landed.  No time for his little speech, he told us to just sit down, and be quiet, and he would fill us in later.

 We sat really quiet, watching this mom and her cub wander along the beach.  Then on the other side of us came a single big bear.

 Big bear, a little closer than I'm comfortabe with!  Ranger just kept nodding that it's ok, just sit still.

 

Ranger was right, I didn't die.

 There were rules as to where you could have food, and unless you were eating it right then, it was to remain in the bear proof boxes.  Here we are having one of my most favorite treats, a baguette with oil and vinegar, watching bears on a beach on an island in Alaska.  Doesn't get much better than that!

 Jelly fish

 There was a hike you could do to a observation tower.  Once on the tower, you are safe....getting there, well that's another story.  You hike through this jungle like vegetation.  It's beautiful, but you know there are bears all throughout the area!

Once at the tower, I was able to relax, and watch the bear....and try not to think about the fact that I had to hike back through the bushes to get back out on the beach.

 Didn't die.

Another great place to view the bears was along the river.  The ranger had a telescope set up that we could use to view the bears out on the beach. 

 Walking back to where our float plane was to pick us up.

The pilot said because of some scheduling issues, if it was alright with us, we needed to take a detour to pick up some workers from the other side of  Admiralty from the Greens Creek Mine.  SURE!!!

 

Caitlyn and Me at the Greens Creek Mine dock.  

It was so cool to be able to see the other side of the island.  I love a plane ride!

 Long story, the glacier above the Mendenhall Glacier had made a dam which held rain water.  That dam broke and the water all came down under the Mendenhall Glacier, and flooded the area around the lake and the Mendenhall River.  The road to the trail head was totally under water, as was the trail out to Nugget falls.

The peak of the flooding was at 3 a.m., so I wanted to go to Nugget Falls the next morning to check out the flooding on that side. These pictures were taken around 9:30 pm.  Yep, the sun is still up.