Alaska Day 8 – Across Cook Inlet

We took off on bush plans to Chinitna Bay.  This is probably the most remote place I have been.  You can only get there by boat or plane.  We stayed at the Bear Mountain Lodge and visited Lake Clark National Park. 

The flight over allowed for viewing the spectacular Alaskan scenery.  You can’t get tired of looking at this.  

After landing on the beach in the plane, we dropped off our stuff at the lodge and headed down the beach in buses that were converted to handle driving on the sand.  Our guide instructed us to always stay together in a group for our safety around the bears. 

It didn’t take long to spot our first bear,  a sow with two adorable cubs.  The cubs were likely around 4 months old.  They couldn’t possibly be cuter.  After viewing many more bears, we returned to the lodge for a hearty meal and went back out for more bear viewing. 

We had the delightful opportunity to view a bear washing himself in a stream.  I did not realize that bears did such a good job of rubbing themselves down – belly, under arms, behind the ears.   

We met the resident park ranger.  She’s a young lady who spends the season out here by herself and sleeps in a cabin with fencing to keep out the bears.  On this particular day she was accompanied by a biologist who was conducting research. I haven’t been collecting stamps from the National Parks, but I started with this park.  Christina was insistent that I take advantage of getting the stamp and it seemed like a good idea to me!

I have a lot of video of the bears and will put together the best clips and place in a future blog post.