Lions and TIgers and .....

OH MY!
So I wrote part of this yesterday, and my internet connection pooped and I hadn’t saved it. Sorry! But my story got better this morning, and here it goes:
We arrived last night in Katmai National Park, home to some 3,000 grizzly bears. In fact this is where the famous Grizzly Man film, with Timothy Treadwell was made. But enough about him, because if you haven’t seen the movie, he was a total nutter!
So we get into the zodiac for low tide, when the bears come to the beach and feed on clams. Luckily, the production company had to pay booku bucks to have a filming permit for this park, but the upside was that they provided a Ranger to accompany us in our boat. She was awesome! He name is Wendy, and she has been a national parks ranger since 1985, serving in just about every park that we have in this vast country and she had the stories to prove it. She directed us to all the right places last night and we saw 4 different bear. Things got even better this morning. I woke up feeling horrible, because I have acquired a wretched cold, and our producer told me, that if I wasn't feeling well, I should stay behind and they would just get footage of the bears.
I am soooo glad that I didn’t. We picked up Wendy in the ranger hut, zoomed past the other passengers that were out in their zodiacs already and found a mama bear and her 2-3 year old cub down on the beach. They were the same cute pair that we had seen the night before. So we cut the engine, and we pulled out the oars and started to row the boat in. We ended up being 10 Feet from them! Now, the best way to put this in perspective is the fact that you are supposed to be 50 feet from the bears, but since we were on the water, and the bears were not even acknowledging our presence, Wendy let up creep all the way in. The water was getting pretty shallow, and the mom could easily have reached us within 10 seconds. It was AMAZING. We stayed there for awhile filming and watching and just feeling in awe of the moment. We then cruised on to find another guy down at the beach, and he was so animated. He would dig up the clams, and then pounce on them to crack them open. Imagine weighing enough to crack a clam with you hands just by landing on it. Wow

Time to make the donuts

Time to make the donuts
Yesterday, the captain and our pilot decided that they had a hankering for donuts. So unbeknownst to us, the rerouted the ship early in the morning, put out a phone call and ordered for the entire ship! We weighed anchor, and lucky for us the film crew was privy to the plan so the went ashore to get the donuts, which were being made fresh by a woman, and her two daughters who come up to Alaska every summer to make donuts and coffee for the fisherman….let me just say that I have never had a yummier donut. And if that wasn’t enough, last night for dinner we had halibut. Halibut that the captain, the pilot, and one of our philipino staff guys went out and caught themselves. 70 lbs of it. I will never believe another “fresh fish” sign again because it doesn’t get any fresher than this! Oh, and to finish it all out, we stopped by a salmon processing boat, and we are having fresh salmon at an on deck BBQ tonight. Yum!

Whale Tail

A Whale Tail
I really can’t go on enough about whales right now. Yesterday, I saw about 7 humpback whales, as well as a fin whale, and some Dall porpoise. One of the humpbacks was up to some shenanigans, and entertained us for about a half hour, by Tail Lobbing. Basically, he was hanging out at the surface, blowing air, and taking over half of his backside out of the water and thrumming the surface with it. I can’t even fathom how they do this because anytime I get both hands up out of the water I sink. But , He or it could have been a she, I can’t really tell! He hit the water over and over with his tail, did a half belly flop, and then began to smack the surface with his fin. We were so close to all of this that we could hear him hitting the water. Nobody knows why they do this, but they think that maybe it’s a form of communication, or the whale is just having a bit of fun. Whatever it was, it was definitely one of the coolest things I’ve seen!

Dutch Harbor

Dutch Harbor
We arrived bright and early today in Dutch Harbor, which is most famous for the Discovery show Deadliest Catch. Our tour today was to consist of a WWII Museum, a Russian Orthodox church, a Memorial, an Aleut museum, and the local 4 star resort/hotel. So we got to the first museum which was small but interesting, and we only had 20 minutes there which was quite brief. The we got to the church and we had 45minutes there, which I popped my head inside the door, thought to myself “YAWN” and then wandered around. There were about 30 bald eagles flying about and I decided to capture them with my camera. They were magnificent, and they are soooooo large. Then the eagles took off, because there seemed to be a school of fish just out in the water. They were diving and picking up fish and swirling in the air, the whole lot of them. Breathtaking.
So they flew off with their lunch, and I still had plenty of time to kill at the church. Again, Yawn, so I decided to ask our wonderful host, a local girl who had grown up on the Island, where the next stop was. She reported that it was quite a ways down the road, at the end of the little bay that we were on. I looked out over the water where she was pointing, and I said “Where the flags are?”. “Yep” she replied. “Um, yeah… I’ll see you down there”. She was shocked that I wanted to walk that far, meanwhile it was about 15 NY blocks, basically nothing to me.
Yeah, no film crew, a day off and so I set off on my own little adventure. I saw a few more eagles, stopped and talked with a few locals and when I arrived at the park, I saw something in the distance trotting across the street. Could it be? I thought to myself, it seems big enough. So I ran to where I had seen the creature, and sure enough it darted back across the street and I caught a good look at it.
Now a brief aside, for those of you who don’t know my spiritual history, I personally believe in a blend of Buddhism and Native American Spirituality, with a healthy dose of skepticism mixed in. Now in brief, the natives of our country believe that there are spirits, and spirit animals that help guide us along the path of life. And my spirit animal was determined to be a fox, I even have a beautiful shield that a friend created for me, that shows a red fox with blue eyes.
So, what I had found was my Red Fox and I was determined to get up as close to her as I could. She crossed the street a second time, and when she got to the lawn of the community center where I was standing I yelled out to her. And to my astonishment, she stopped. So I snapped a few pictures, and emboldened by the fact that she hadn’t run away yet. I creeped a bit closer. She sniffed the air, looking at me intently, occasionally twitching her ears and giving a little start at the noises around us. I started talking to her, and she crept a little closer, and I crept a little closer and we ended up about 3 feet from each other. I thought to myself how cool would it be to touch her or pet her. Then the other voice in my head (there are plenty of them) said “Fool, you can’t pet a wild fox!”. So I satisfied myself by crouching down on the ground so that I was right up next to her. I even forgot to continue taking pictures because it was such a wonderful moment that I was having, talking to her and she seemed to be listening. I was moved.
So, for all of you who want to poo-poo my story by pointing out that the locals sometimes feed the foxes scraps, and they become quite approachable. I want to say, that even having that knowledge doesn’t take away even a scrap of how magical I felt in the moment of meeting her, and having the discourse that took place.

Pribilof Islands

The Pribilof Islands
Well, most of you have never heard of this place, so I will give you a brief overview of it’s position in History. The fur seal, which is more of a sea lion than seal, does 80% of it’s breeding on the shores of the Pribilof Islands. The Russians sailors discovered this gold mine of fur in the 1700’s and basically killed indiscriminately, harvesting every seal that they could find….which was 80% of all the fur seals in the world. The seals all come ashore for the breeding season, thousands of them, and the Russian took everything they could get. In fact, they were so lazy about it, they took a village of Aleut Natives and relocated them to live year round on the islands, and harvest the seals for them, and they would just show up once a year to collect the goods. Lazy!!
America purchased Alaska, and with it the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands, and when the surveyors arrived, they immediately called for a limit on harvesting these magnificent creatures. They would harvest only a very specific amount of seals, and only the young males that were not big enough to breed, then sell the pelt to London. You see, fur seal coats were all the rage at the time, and only the folks at the London tannery knew how to process this tough leathery skin. Finally, people began to see that this was also a huge mistake and a moratorium was placed on harvesting the seals, Allowing for what I saw today. An entire island ringed with seals. They were everywhere. As you approach the shore you can see the playing in the water, and from a distance what looks like rocks, are actually hundreds of seals camped out on the rocks! The pups are so tiny, and they can’t even swim yet, and they hang out with their moms and with each other rolling around and playing together of the rocky shore.
We took a bus out to a Rookery, a breeding beach for the seals. I stood there in awe, we were standing no less than 10 feet from the closest one. And he yelled at me as I got off of the bus. Their yells sound something like a large loud belch, very throaty and load. Imagine what comes up when you let loose after drinking a whole rootbeer. He was yelling because he had gotten away from the main group of seals in order to catch a nap and we obviously woke his cranky butt up!
I had to laugh because he was so lazy that all he did was lift his head and yell, he couldn’t even be bothered by sitting up all of the way. So about another 20 feet down the beach were the rest of the crowd. The huge bulls who come out of the sea in May, and don’t return to the water until the end of July or August. They are about 700 pounds of big bully. They bully each other, they bully the girls, they are just to bully to be imagined. They don’t eat or drink this entire time, and live off of their blubber stores, so basically they a big cranky buggers. Then the female are these beautiful light chocolate creatures, dainty next to the men. Playful with their pups, and fun to see swimming around in the kelp eating fish. Finally, the pups, are like little puppys squirming about on the rock, bleating like sheep, rolling all over each other paying no mind to anything around them. They were so cute I wanted to squish em….or take em home with me.

St Matthew

St Mathew and Hall Island
Well, it was rise and shine, sooooooo early this morning, 5am. I looked out of the window and thought, “how horrible it is outside, I can’t see a thing”. I’ve been spoiled by the amount of daylight that we get here, so I had assumed that the sun was already over the horizon and that the din and fog was due to a storm out there. Not the case! The sun was rising at 6:30am this morning instead of 2:45am, and we were going to climb a cliff to enjoy the view. We got onto the island and made short work of it, in time for a beautiful sunrise, and a few sightings of the very rare McKay’s Bunting, a bird which only exists on that island. The basically look like super white little balls of fluff, and are about the same size, so you had to hurry to get a glimpse before they skittered off.
Then back to the ship for a short move to visit Hall Island, a birders Paradise. If you’re into birds you would be over the moon at visiting this place. The birds of this region quickly figured out, that living here was perfect, you had tons of fish from the sea, and no predators. I saw literally thousands of birds on the cliffs as we toured around the side of the island inside the zodiac boats. Puffin, and tufted puffins, which look like penguins but are interestingly enough not related to them. They have both evolved the same way, to become similar birds, on opposite ends of the globe. Except the puffin can fly, quite clumsily. They look like bumblebees flapping their stubby little wings so hard, trying to escape gravity.
We were also lucky enough to get Cheli out excursion director as our zodiac driver for this foray into nature. She is an amazing New Zealander from Queenstown, tough as nails and very, very funny. The cliffs were spectacular, and covered every inch with birds. Parts of the island jetted out into the ocean to connect with thin, very tall rock faces, and a series of caves and archway. Cheli got us right up next to a few puffins, and she also had no qualms gunning the engine and taking us through narrow openings in the rocks next to the cliff in order to see birds, nesting in little cracks and ledges in the rocks. It was natures amusement park, and no disney ride could ever compare to this experience.

St Lawrence

Gambell
St Lawrence Island.
Sorry I didn’t get a chance to write yesterday, being that the sun never really sets, I lost a day, gained a day and then lost a few hours….I am a bit foggy at times out here on the sea. St Lawrence was quite a neat place, we arrived by zodiac boats from the ship and arrived on a rocky beach, that seemed to extend all the way through town. The whole place was nothing but smooth tiny pebbles, several feet deep and the best way to get around on these rocks, was Quads. It seems that every household there owns a Honda 450 quad, and a Suzuki Snowmobile! Interesting brand loyalty, but I saw nary a Quad that wasn’t a Honda, although it’s probably easier if everyone owns the same machine, because then it’s easier to swap parts!
So they cruise around on the ATV’s in the summer and snowmobiles in the winter. They also have a world class marathon runner, who is from Gambell, the northern town on the island, and he has run many races around the world. He trains by running on these rocks…can you imagine the quad strength that that requires, and in fact they have a race there each year. Picture running on the beach times 100, the rocks soak up every bit of effort that you put into them.
We had a chance to toddle around town and see another cultural performance while we were there before hopping back on the quads for a ride back to the beach. I of course on the return trip encouraged my dirver to get it up to at least 40, but since there was him, me and the excursion director piled onto this motorcycle, he could only get it up to 38, but he assured me that he got it going much faster when he was without cargo.