Mid-Summer Camping Trip

This weekend our entire group went camping at Sawmill Creek, which is located in an inlet on the coast of Juneau.  The scenery was simply incredible--we were surrounded by snow-capped mountains on all sides, and we were right on the water. Our campsite was situated a little back from the water due to the fact that the tides here are so crazy.  There is a 19 foot tide swing a couple times a day, and it comes up quite rapidly.  The first afternoon I went flyfishing off the coast for a few hours and managed to catch a fairly good sized dolly varden, which is a type of charr native to Alaska.  For the rest of the evening we just hung out around the fire, boiled some crab and fish that we caught, and relaxed. The sunset that night was incredible. Our cameras definitely didn't do it justice.  The following day on Saturday I pretty much fished from morning till evening with some of the other guys on project.  Some of them were catching a few pink salmon, but I wasn't that lucky. I did catch a few steelhead though, which are ocean-run rainbow trout that have made their way back in. If you know me then you know how much fun I was having--it was so amazing.  It's also the only time I've been fishing and have had multiple sea-lions drift by right in front of me. Crazy sea-lions. 

The boat had dropped us off, so we were waiting on it to pick us up around 3:30-4, and after the tide had come in the fishing was pretty futile, so some of the guys passed the time with a nap (including myself), while a few others thought it a good use of time to go ahead and clean the fish they had just caught. We soon realized why this was not the brightest idea. Pretty soon our freshly cleaned fish had attracted a friend. A brown bear friend.  He came out from the tree line and at first was just poking around up there, but after a few minutes made his way down to say hello, and to check out our fish. Granted it was only a little guy (and very skinny), he was still at least over 6 and a half feet tall when he stood up on his hind legs.  We were just hoping its mom didn't want to come hang out too.

 

So the bear ended up dominating the scraps of fish we had left behind, and we even had to leave the trash bag of cleaned fish for him (which he carried away in his mouth) because he started following us along the rocks.  It's a pretty cool story looking back, but it was actually kind of frightening, haha, especially since at one point the bear was in between me and the rest of the group.  Sorry mom, I know your reading this right now with your jaw dropped.  Don't worry though, I'm safe and sound, haha. Oh, and I got the whole thing on video, so check out facebook if you want to see it.

Eventually the boat picked us up, and the rest of the evening was spent just hanging out. A couple guys and I hiked to a waterfall, which was awesome. Later we messed around balancing on a slack-line that one guy brought and then made a bonfire on the beach. We were even lucky enough to see an orca rise, tail and all. Definitely never seen that before. So yea, this trip was full of a lot of firsts. First for a few different types of fish that I caught, first orca sighting, and first brown bear encounter. I think this surpasses being a mere bear sighting (we've seen quite a few this summer), and qualifies for my first brown bear "encounter." I feel like the word "encounter" is slightly more danger-implying than "sighting." Yep. Quite the weekend.