Part 4: Wednesday, August 21
Wednesday's excursion was the only part of the itinerary that I wasn't able to reconcile with my uncles' itinerary as the tour they had booked was full. They had an 8:30AM flight to Kodiak, another short kashrus tour in a different caviar processing company, and then a
bear viewing tour. We wanted to do the same things, namely to go bear viewing, but alas we wouldn't be able to check out the famous Kodiak brown bears which can grow up to 12 feet tall and weigh up to 1800 pounds! After reading through the
Alaska thread, I saw mention of bear viewing out of Soldotna. I did some research until I came across what looked to be the most promising outfitter
Talon Air. I booked a 2:30PM tour with them for me and Uncle D. at a cost of $500 per person. (Well, only $200 for me after using my Sapphire reserve travel credit.)
Originally when we landed in Anchorage and discovered that there were ongoing forest fires, I did my due diligence to see if they would interrupt any of our plans. I was relieved to see that the
Deshka Landing Fire, which is what we were smelling, wasn't near any routes of our trips that we had planned. But while googling "alaska forest fire", I discovered that there was another fire ongoing in
Swan Lake. This would pose much more problematic as this fire passed directly over the only road into the Kenai peninsula, where Soldotna is located. In fact, the road had been closed down entirely for Monday and parts of Tuesday! I kept in touch with Talon Air, and they recommended either that I fly in to the local airport, or leave very early in the morning and hope that the road would be reopened.
We woke up bright and early Wednesday morning, and drove the Kodiak mashgichim to the airport. We dropped them off at 8 o'clock only to realize that Uncle B. had left his backpack behind in the hotel, and it has had all their food inside. We drove 15 minutes back to the hotel, and 15 minutes back to the airport. Uncle B. is standing at the curb at 8:29 casually drinking a coffee as if his flight wasn't scheduled to depart in 1 minute! Thank G-d there was no TSA to go through, so he takes the backpack and walks over to his plane to board
.
We left the airport and got started on our 3 hour drive from Anchorage to Soldotna. I kept on checking the city website which had information on the road closures. The road was reported closed when we left Anchorage, but we were hoping it would open up as the day progressed.
The drive down Seward Highway was incredible. It's like the PCH in California on steroids. Besides for having this gorgeous drive down the coast, you also have a stunning backdrop across the water of mountains and glaciers. The pictures don't do it justice, because we were in a rush and only took while driving.
So, we stopped to use the roadside facilities, and take a pic with this sign, and on the back of the sign we found this motto;
Land of many uses indeed!! 
We arrived at Cooper's landing where the road closure was, at 11 o'clock, and joined the very long line of cars waiting. Everyone was out of their cars and shmoozing with each other. As soon as we stepped out of the car, we got bageled by a jew who said he was from Odessa. Luckily for us the road reopened at around 12:15 and we started driving. The road was down to 1 lane with flaggers. Visibility was near zero in certain parts, and we kept spotting small brush fires literally on the side of road. The road had been torn up at some point and was mainly gravel/dirt. It was a pretty scary drive for around 10 miles, and then B"H everything cleared up.
moose crash areaWe got to Talon air service at around 1, checked in, and ate lunch. We had a small safety course, and then we were fitted out with waders. We walked down to the backyard which is a registered seaplane base. Mackeys Lakes Seaplane base (FAA identifier L85).
We boarded our plane at the dock. It was a 7-seater Cessna caravan on floats. We were assigned together with another 3 people, so our group totaled 5 people. We had a short 30 minute flight across Cook inlet into Lake Clark National Park. Along the way we passed numerous glaciers, and the view was pretty impressive, because we weren't flying too high up. We passed an active volcano, Mt. Redoubt, which last erupted in 2009. We landed in Crescent Lake, which is the most visited part of this National Park. Takeoff and landing was pretty cool, as it was my first flight in a seaplane. Upon landing we were introduced to our tour guide for the day. We climbed into the boat, a rowboat with an onboard motor.
Mount Redoubt
The views were incredible! Sitting in a boat on a gorgeous lake, the water was a natural turquoise blue, surrounded by mountains, glaciers, and forests. Not a sound to be heard (other than nature), as we were many miles away from the closest city. I could have just sat there for days, forget that we were going to look for bears. The lake was formed by melt-water from the glaciers, which causes the color of the lake to be that incredible color.
There actually is a
private lodge out there where one can stay, but I’m sure it’s not cheap. Our guide was explaining to us how every single part of the lodge was flown in. Lake Clark National Park is one of the few National parks that are only accessible by boat or air. Lake Clark National Park totals 4 million acres, and only has 2 park rangers! For comparison, the state of Hawaii is 4.11 million acres in size, and Rhode Island and Connecticut combined are only 3.77 million acres. We started out on the water, heading towards the popular bear spotting sites. Our guide started shmoozing with us, asking us about ourselves. After breaking my teeth explaining that I'm in college studying Talmudic law in Beth Medrash Govoah, the tour guide casually drops that his son just went off to Israel to study in a yeshiva! (
Now he tells me). Turns out he grew up in a religious home in St. Louis, but nebach ended up marrying some Aleutian/Native American. When he started shmoozing with my uncle about his occupation, he's a shochet, he was very excited to remember all the Yiddish terminology for all the different animal parts that he used to eat as a kid.
As we were moving around looking for bears, the tour guide kept pointing out interesting things along the way. He showed us salmon, explained the different types, and gave us a history of the park, all of it being very informative. At one point, we saw a few boats huddling together and we zoomed over to join them. Our tour guide explained to us that boats huddling together was the telltale sign that a bear had been spotted
. We got our first glimpse of a grizzly bear moving in and out of the foliage on the shore. Nothing too exciting yet. After around a half hour we saw a black bear as well. We stopped on a little island to check out paw prints in the sand. After seeing how big those paws were, everyone was terrified to use the bathroom, because it meant you had to go into the woods on your own
. Our guide showed us a few different types of wild berries, and we picked some edible ones to taste them. We passes by a professional videographer with a massive gimbal on their boat doing a video shoot for a video about the park.
After 3 and a half hours, where we barely saw 2 bears, we were getting kind of disappointed. This is what we paid $500 for? Our guide took us across the lake to a different popular spot. At this point it was getting a little chilly, the rest of the day had been a gorgeous 70 degrees in the sun, but now the sun was already behind the mountains. We got to the other shore, shut off the engine and waited. We saw a bear come down to the water line and start looking for salmon. This bear was literally sent just for us. She proceeded to put on a show for half an hour, jumping, running, and playing in the water. Smacking fish for the fun of it with her paws, and occasionally biting into a salmon. It was incredible to be sitting 30 feet away from a bear in the wild. Our guide was busy reassuring us that he never had to use his gun on a bear even once, and if you don't bother them they won't bother you. Easy for your mother to say that about dogs or bees, quite different when talking about a 1000 pound bear!! We got very lucky as the week we were there was spawning season as I mentioned earlier. There are so many fish that come back to their place of birth, that the bears have unlimited food to eat. Our guide showed us how the bear was literally taking a bite from the brain of the fish (highest fat content) and tossing away the rest of the fish. That's how plentiful they were. Or guide told us that one week later, they would be eating the entire fish as there wouldn't be enough. We saw remnants all over the shore, dead fish with just a bite taken out of the heads.
At ~10 seconds in you can hear an audible crunch of the bear cracking the salmons skull!!
After watching this bear for around half an hour it was time to go to catch our seaplane back to society. We flew back in a deHavilland DHC-2 Beaver with 6 passengers. As we reached civilization, our phones started buzzing away with worried phone calls from our wives. We didn't know before the trip that there wouldn't be any service where we going, so for all they knew, we had dropped off the map for 6 hours! (I'm pretty sure this was the day R' Elya Brudny said people shouldn't do water activities after there were 2 tragedies in water parks, and that definitely didn't alleviate our wives fears!) After checking in with our wives, we were pretty grateful that we didn't have service for 2 reasons. Number 1: It was super relaxing to be disconnected from the entire world, surrounded by some of the most gorgeous scenery I have ever seen! Number 2: the road back to Anchorage had been closed on and off the whole day, and had we known about it, we would have been pretty anxious the whole day.
We landed at 8:30, got into our car and started heading back, as there was talk that they may shut down the road overnight again. B"H it was still open when we got there, and we passed through uneventfully! Our drive back to Anchorage took an extra hour because there was construction on the road for 3-mile stretches, so they were alternating traffic in 15 minute intervals. We got stuck waiting 4 times. As it was we were exhausted, and the extra driving time didn't help. We got back to our hotel at 12.
My uncle's that had went to Kodiak had started a grill so the food was ready by the time we got back. Uncle B. brought his sous vide with him and we used the plastic insert of the cooler. We set it on a timer and had fully cooked food waiting for us, just waiting for a quick sear. The food was amazing, we compared trip notes and pictures while we ate, and then we collapsed into our beds after yet another exhausting day.
(Their trip was very similar, except that they were standing on ground 30 feet away from the bears! while we were in a boat.)
