Chance Encounters

Friday 14 August 2015

I was awake by 0730 this morning and wandered down to the lake to find a family of Loons swimming around. I watched for a while before getting ready for breakfast.

We spent a while talking to some other English guests that are staying here over breakfast and then loaded up the car for another day of exploring.

We set off south towards Anchorage and took the Eklutna turn-off on the route 1 and headed for Eklutna lake. The road wriggled its way up into the mountains for about 10 miles and ended at a car park by the lake. We decided to go for a walk for part of the way round the lake. The lake is well over 5 miles long. It is also full of glacial water which makes it look rather milky. We were hoping to see some birds and perhaps mammals, but all we saw was a few Chickadees. I also saw a large heap of Moose droppings when I headed up a loop trail whilst Lynn walked back to the car. It was a beautiful lake but a bit disappointing for wildlife. We also bumped into the other English couple from our B&B.

We left just before midday and drove on down the Old Glen Highway to Eagle River and on to the Chugach State Park which is about 10 miles east of Eagle River. Here we sat in the sun and ate some fruit for lunch outside the visitors centre. There were quite a lot of people there, but whilst we were eating many left.

After our fruity lunch, we set off to walk the short loop trail. The trail headed downhill from the visitors centre and we stopped to watch several Chickadees and Vireos picking seeds off a Hemlock before continuing to the Beaver viewing area. As it was the middle of the day, the Beavers were all sound asleep in their lodge. In the stream, however, there were hundreds of mature salmon drawn to stream for spawning. They were beautifully coloured reds and blues. After spawning, they will all die. It's amazing to think that they hatched in this stream, swam all the way to the sea, lived their entire adult life in the sea, but have returned to the place of their birth to spawn and die.

We carried on with our walk and reached the next viewing area, where one is supposed to see salmon! Instead, we saw a family of Green Winged Teal in the stream and several Gray Jays in a tree. Suddenly, we realised there was something just upstream in the river. To our amazement, we realised it was a Bear. We quickly got the camera out and trained the binoculars on it expecting to leave quickly. I was so engrossed in watching the Bear that I didn't notice the arrival of other people and was astounded when they greeted us by name. It was the entire Goodwin family, except for Christy, and Angie and Megan Stalker. We obviously knew they were in the area, but never expected to meet them in the middle of a nature reserve! Two chance encounters in as many minutes, three if you include our meeting at Eklutna Lake.

The Bear continued its fishing efforts for about 40 minutes. For most of the time, the only witnesses to this were 9 Brits and just 2 Americans! I took lots of pictures, hopefully some will come out well. Andy took some too and also a video which he put on Facebook earlier.

As we were leaving the park, the resident photographer was just heading down to take some photos. I've since seen the results on Facebook, he has some stunning shots. He thinks it was a young Brown/Grizzly, learning how to catch salmon.

We then left the park and headed back north. We turned of the main road and followed the Old Glen Highway along side the Knik river. We then followed the Knik River Rd for a few miles in search of Moose, but failed! We then crossed first the Knik river followed a few miles later by the Matanushka River. Both are glacial rivers and, typically are very wide and shallow.

When we got back to Wasilla, it was very busy, but we managed to get into the Last a Frontier pub again for dinner and a beer.

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