Kodiak Island and Homer - Alaska 2014

So there we were, standing on the Alaska Marine Highway dock in Kodiak on Kodiak Island at 1:45am, the temperature for us is brisk to say the least, and Beth, our host at Mrs Potts B&B, arrives as promised.

We were soon asleep in a very comfortable bed and emerged for breakfast around 8:30am next morning.  Beth has a lively and very mischievous sense of humour as we discovered whilst enjoying the first of multiple delightful breakfasts with her and with any other guests also staying there.

The first of two trip maps for this post, shows where we went on the island during nearly a week that we were on Kodiak Island.  You will get to the 2nd map as you read on.

So just to get started, let’s begin with the island.  It’s the second largest island in the USA and it is known as the emerald isle because it is green, very green, well in summer at least because it rains a fair bit.  The island is 160 kms long and ranges in width between 16 kms and 96 km wide.

bald eagle on Russian Orthodox cross

The island was originally inhabited by the Alutiiq people for thousands of years and in 1784, the Russians established a settlement on the island to support their fur harvesting and trading ambitions.  

Due to savage reductions in wildlife numbers over the years, then in 1941, well after Alaska was bought by the USA, 2/3rds of the island was declared a wildlife refuge to protect land and sea species from being wiped out.

Whilst there are a number of roads on the island, they are very limited to where they go due to the refuge and the only practical way to get into preserved wilderness areas is to go by either boat or seaplane.  

On the island, apart from what we were here to see, there are introduced black tailed deer, mountain goats and red foxes, along with native bald eagles, puffins, otters and guillemots amongst the other animals that can be searched for.

Most tourists who come to Kodiak are here for two prime reasons, fishing or looking at one of the largest carnivores in the world, the Kodiak brown bear, a genetically distinct sub species of mainland grizzlies, except they are on average, 2 times larger.  There is a LOT of fishing done on and around Kodiak, especially for salmon of every variety during summer and king crab, with Kodiak being the ‘home’ of these crabs.

We were here specifically to see Kodiak bears and allowed extra days to try and ensure success, in case the weather caused delays, because as experienced in Dutch, the weather here is very changeable.  On Kodiak Island there are about 3,000 bears living mainly within the refuge, but they are known to occasionally wander near town. 

hmmm!

So when we use the terms, ‘largest carnivore’, let me try to describe this for you.  A large boar (male) kodiak bear can weigh up to 635 kgs and if they decide to stand up on their hind legs to check you out, they will reach up about 3 mtrs and remember, if they choose to, they can sprint at the same speed as a horse over shortish distances.

We had pre-booked our bear viewing flight with Andrews Airways many months earlier based on the advice from Beth and she was right, these tours are heavily booked for the summer months.  After being collected and arriving at the Andrews Airways base, we were kitted up with thigh high waders and made our way to a beaver seaplane for the 45 min flight across the island.

the trusty Beavers

We were travelling with 2 other tourists from the USA who had spent extensive time wandering around Australia, Mark the pilot and his niece, which was a real benefit because he was keen to show her as much of the scenery as he could whilst she was with him.  Of additional comfort was Mark having worked for many years and all year round on the island with Andrews, so we knew we would be in good hands as we flew over and amongst the mountains to one end of Fraser Lake.

flying across Kodiak Island

Our landing was very smooth and soon we were all walking along a dirt path for about 1 km, looking forward to seeing one of these large bears.  It didn’t take long and Rob spotted it first, a large brown shape nonchalantly walking away from us back into the bushes only 200 mtrs away.

At one end of Fraser Lake is a fish ladder which looks more like a small weir wall with the ‘ladder’ on the  side closest to where we would be sitting.  It has been built to make it a little easier for the salmon to reach further up stream past the high waterfalls behind the weir wall.  

The salmon congregate in a small lake in front of the wall before making their way against the fast flowing current, up the ‘ladder’.  The bears aren’t stupid, they come here to feast and fatten up on salmon before winter returns.

mum and her 3 cubs

Even before we had sat down our hopes of seeing Kodiak bears close up had been achieved because in the water in front of the weir wall was a large mother hunting for salmon whilst her three, 2nd year old cubs waited semi patiently on the wall itself.  

It wasn’t long after some sprints into the lake before she had a fish that her cubs were soon squabbling about to get their claws on it also.

It was just fantastic as we sat and settled in and the cameras started to click profusely.  Suddenly to our very near left, another bear maybe about 4-5 yrs old, came wandering into sight and straight into the water.  

Immediately the mother bear was on edge and watching the new bear very closely and finally when it went too close to her and her cubs, she reacted by moving quickly towards it, forcing it out of the water and then chasing it up the side of a small hill.

With the water in front of us clear of bears, another much larger and most likely male bear also lumbered out of the scrub, straight into the water and up to the weir wall looking for fish.  Took him a little while but he soon had one before ripping it to pieces, the bright red flesh rapidly disappearing into its large mouth.  The mother bear rounded up her cubs and led them back up a hill where they stayed for a while.

more bear photos in separate link at end of this post

Then further down the river two more quite large bears appeared, also walked straight into the water, but chose to keep their distance from the large male, but he was distracted looking for another fish.  So to our shared delight, these two bears made their way across to our side of the water, then walked back onto land and proceeded to play fight right in front of us and close, about 8-10 mtrs away.  Every now and then they would look at all of us but soon returned to the jousting.  All that could be heard from us was click, click and more clicking.

These two bears wisely decided to climb up along the water ladder searching for fish, because the large male had decided it was time to get out of the water, which he also chose to do right in front of us, also about 8 mtrs away and occasionally he would look us over before eating more grass… thankfully.

In all whilst we were there, we saw 11 bears coming and going or returning, chasing each other, avoiding each other, looking for fish and eating fish.  At no stage did we feel threatened, in part because of Mark’s experience and equally by the local resident Ranger who joined us to answer any questions whilst keeping a close eye on the bears at all times.  If Mark and the Ranger were relaxed even when the bears were as close as they were, then we figured we could remain relaxed.  Comforting theory we thought.

We watched the bears for a few hours and all too soon it was time to head back to the plane and again enjoy the wonderfully scenic flight back across and at times between snow capped mountains or passing over deep green valleys or waterways, but this time whilst on an adrenaline high after having had a very exciting time with the bears.

This link will take you to a live webcams of bears hopefully feeding on salmon - not on Kodiak Island - back on the mainland in Katmai National Park at a location called Brooks Falls:

http://explore.org/live-cams/player/brown-bear-salmon-cam-brooks-falls

There was still a lot more to explore around Kodiak, so after picking up our ‘rent a wreck’, over successive days we drove to the end of each of the main roads on the island, including doing some pseudo 4WD driving across creek beds. 

On the first day with a car, the 4th of July celebrations were underway, which included a parade through town which we watched, lots of people having BBQ’s around their homes, or on some of the main camping spots near rivers and beaches.  

At night it was time to let off fireworks, not at a central location but generally wherever anyone wanted to within local rules.  With the sun setting around 11:30pm, the fireworks were still going off very late into the night or early morning.

Kodiak the town from Pillar Mountain

During our days with the car, a few times we went out of town to where a number of rivers run into the ocean to watch people fishing for salmon whilst standing on bridges and could see the salmon only a few metres away from them, quite something.

On one of our explorations across the island, we did find something which surprised us… a rocket launch pad, two of them actually, along with an assembly facility and separate mission control centre, owned and by Alaska Aerospace Corp.  

It wasn’t that far off the road, big fences around it naturally, but little other observable security.  After some google searching, we learnt that 15 launches of something have occurred here since 2001 with a 100% success rate.

Before leaving Kodiak Island, we had to have a king crab meal.  Kodiak Island is the home of these crabs so naturally it was the right place to try them and it was very delicious, might have to try these again before we leave Alaska.

Rob and king crab

Finally it was time to say our farewells after a very enjoyable time on Kodiak Island and staying with Beth at her B&B.  We boarded the ‘Trusty Tusty’ (MV Tustumena) ferry which had previously brought us to Kodiak from Dutch for the overnight trip north to Homer and back onto the Alaskan mainland.

During wanderings so far in both Alaska and the Yukon, when describing to other travellers the names of towns we were planning to visit, whenever we mentioned Homer, there was usually a response like, “that’s a great place” or similar, so now here we were at 7am at the very end of Homer’s 8 km spit.

This second trip map shows our route from Kodiak Island to Homer, around the Homer area and then back through a new part of the Kenai to Anchorage again… all is explained if you read on.

Homer has one of the longest spits of land in the world and thankfully there was a place open at 7am within a short walk from where we landed to get some breakfast and begin to absorb what this place is about.  Fishing, lots and lots of fishing!  There were fishing charter boats heading out to sea, there are fish restaurants and there are lots and lots of RVs and people camping along almost the entire length of the spit to go fishing.

Homer Spit

Homer is proudly known as the halibut fishing capital of the world.

We eventually arrived at our B&B around midday, settled in and then went walking around other parts of Homer.  It has a nice casual feel to it and has a permanent population of around 5,000 but right now during the short Alaskan summer, probably 40-50,000 with more RVs pulling into town constantly.  There are lots of camping areas and they are basic, a bit of fine grey gravel dirt and power… probably.  The campers don’t care, they’re here for the fish.

The following day, we took a wildlife ferry cruise to a very small town of around 250 called Seldovia, located along Kachemak Bay which  is part of Cook Inlet.  Before arriving at Seldovia, we travelled via Gull Island, named very appropriately, but along with the masses of gulls there were cormorants, guillimots and one of our favourites, puffins.  Again there were quite a few sea otters and this time we managed to get a better view of a baby perched on its mother’s stomach.

Gull Island

Seldovia is really quaint with some of the pre 1964 earthquake buildings still standing along with the timber boardwalks originally used by the Russians and indigenous folk to move around on.  

some old Seldovia houses on boardwalk

Prior to the earthquake, this town was one of many in the area subject to 8-9 mtr tidal movements every 6 hours, but in 1964, the land in the area dropped by 2 mtrs, most of the boardwalks and buildings in many towns were washed away.  

We found a quirky little place nestled down near the water in a small inlet to have lunch and watch numerous salmon jumping out of the water in front of us and a lone sea otter cruised slowly past.

For our remaining day in Homer, we used a rental car to go exploring around town and along quite a beautiful coastline before heading back out to the spit for dinner at one of the many fish restaurants.  Not far from Homer is a small place called Anchor Point where we were told there were bald eagles and sure enough, managed to get a few different shots, albeit from a distance.  Anchor Point however gained its name because Captain Cook lost an anchor here.  That Captain Cook pops up in all sorts of places.

aerial duelling

Halibut is a weird looking fish but it tastes great and over here is more expensive than the very plentiful salmon.  Two of the other guests staying in the B&B were from Alabama and were also in Homer to go fishing for halibut which they planned to have it packed and frozen, then shipped back to their home a few weeks later.

We departed Homer and drove back to Anchorage along the remaining part of The Kenai we had not yet seen, pulling into little towns along the way before finally arriving back at the Arctic Fox for our third and final stay with them.  The next phase of our wanderings now has us heading southwards.

Yep… there are additional photos including an extra one just for those bears, so click on a link if you’re so inclined:

CLICK HERE for more photos - Kodiak & Homer 2014

CLICK HERE for more photos - Kodiak Bears 2014