BEARS !! at Anan Bay Bear Observatory Friday, 07.26.2013

This morning we left Ryan’s Cove for Anan Bay Bear Observatory.  Because of all the fish in the river there are lots of bears!  This is one of the few places in the world where you can see black bears and brown bears together.  The bears tolerate each other because there are so many salmon.

We started by finding anchorage in the bay close to the US Park Service float cabin.  We were able to flag down the rangers as they were heading into shore and have the discussion about the fact that we only had 1 permit.  The rangers were very nice and said that because we had both made the trip they would let me in!  They did laugh and say, “Please don’t tell anyone that we are nice!  We don’t want everyone thinking that they can just show up!!”.

As we rowed in to the trail head we got to see two separate brown bears on the shore!  Once we arrived at the head of the boardwalk we got a prepared speech from the rangers on bear safety and then headed out on our 1 ½ mile hike out to the waterfalls and the bear observatory.

 

 

We spent about 3 hours at the waterfall and got to see a lot of black bears.  We saw two separate black mother bears with their cubs – one with two cubs and one with a single cub.  We also saw one large brown bear with her two cubs out in the valley on our way back to the trail head.

 

 

Just as we were rounding the last corner of the boardwalk trail, heading back to our dinghy, a big brown bear was coming at us!!  The bear was about 7 feet in front of us.  The brown bear looked as surprised to see us as we were to see him!  He was on all four legs and his shoulders reached Bruce at chest height!  All Bruce really saw was big black eyes looking at him!  Looking over the bear’s shoulder we could see the Park Ranger hand signaling us to STOP.  So we waited a moment to see what the bear would do & then waved our arms and yelled at the bear (like you would your dog) to go up the hill side – and low & behold he did! LOL!

 

While we were at the waterfalls viewing bears – there was a large brown bear visiting our dinghy!  He thought the inner tube on our dinghy was something to play with!  We’re sure glad he did not puncture the inner tube while bouncing up and down!  The bear also climbed into our dinghy and pulled out our life jackets and took one of my rain boots!  Lucky for us the park ranger chased him away and got him to drop my boot.  Boy was our dinghy full of mud and needed a serious bath!

We decided that we would have lunch on the back deck before we continued onto Meyer’s Chuck for the evening.  While enjoying our lunch we were able to watch a brown bear walking along the shore. 

All in all a very cool way to send the day!