Homer - Bear Viewing Tour Up Close And Personal!

After Seward we decided to go further south and we picked Homer as our next destination. It was only a few hours drive and apart from one stretch of road where we needed to follow a pilot car through the roadworks, it was an easy drive. We even spotted someone's agility setup in their front yard :)

Once we arrived in Homer we went for a quick shop, picked our campground for the time here (3 nights) called A Fisherman's Resort, and after hooking up the RV we went for a walk. Well firstly we went to see about a bear viewing tour we had picked and their office is only around the corner (literally). But they were fully booked. So we went on a walk down to the end of what's called the Homer Spit, basically a natural pier that's around 4miles long into the ocean. At the end there are restaurants, tour offices, fishing charter offices etc.

There is also a campground on there, and you can see some people take their camping seriously. Full on truck with oversized trailer thank you very much.

Some leftover boat

A slightly different RV, this one looks home made, complete with furnace.

Someone with enough time on their hands had fortified their tent on the beach.

Fishing is the main tourist and local business here, and on the spit there are tables outside the charter offices where they fillet the fish for those who went out on a trip. This guy could fillet a halibut in about a minute flat. The main fish caught here are halibut and salmon.

These fish were massive, about a meter long.

Another husband waiting bench in front of a souvenir shop.

One of the offices here belonged to the Alaska Bear Adventure company. In the window they had a sign that said there were spaces for the friday afternoon tour, so we went in and enquired about it. We could go on standby and if there were people booked on it with enough room for us, it would only cost us $399 instead of $650 per person. Yes it's not cheap and all bear tours are roughly the same price. So after checking them out online and making sure they were good ( they are number 1 on tripadvisor) as decided to ring them friday morning and put ourselves on the standby list.

So at 9am we were on standby and we rang again at noon to find out about the weather and if we could go as standby or whether we had to buy full price tickets. Turns out that a group of 9 had booked in, so two planes were already full. So we decided to bite the bullet and make ourselves full paying passengers with a guaranteed spot.

We were debating on whether or not we should spend this amount of money as we had already seen bears in Denali. In the end we decided to go for it. We're here, this is the best place to do this kind of tour and we're not gonna come back anytime soon.

So we drove to the small airport where we were given special long gumboots and given the safety talk about flying. Each pilot is also your tour guide, except in this case because there was a group of 9, only two tourguides were needed and our pilot Mike had the time off after flying us to the viewing spot.

Mike

We were in a group of 5 people with Jared as our guide. Before we set off on foot to go to the bears he told us a few of the "dos and don'ts" when it comes to bear encounters. The bears here are quite special in that they have never had bad experiences with humans and have also not been fed by humans. So they don't see humans as food providers or shy away from them. Which means they can get incredibly close to you without being bothered by your presence. When I say they can get close to you it means just that: humans are allowed to approach the bears in certain viewing areas in the wild, up to a certain distance. But if you sit down in a viewing area and the bear comes towards you, you don't have to move. In fact you shouldn't move, and running away is one of the worst things you can do. They can outrun you easily and running away will trigger their instinct to chase.

So the best things to do is kneel down (submissive posture) and don't move. If they get too close for your comfort, you can slowly stand up (this is a warning posture) and they will take the hint and move away. We got to see this in person!

The bear below walked towards us, checking us out and was about 5m away, when Jared stood up. And the bear paused and then moved past us.

This is him moving past us. I couldn't even get his entire body in the frame, he was that close. Interestingly neither Simone or myself felt in any way nervous or in danger. He was just casually strolling past us and checked our group out, there was no hint of aggression.

We called this one Einstein, he still has his winter hair around his face and neck :)

He strolled past us about 10m away.

We saw several mums with their cubs too, this one had three cubs following her around. They are spring cubs, meaning they were born in February this year and have grown from fist size to their current size since then. At a very young age they start eating what mum eats, in addition to mum's milk. They do that for a couple of years until they get told to move on.

Video:

 This big boy crossed the river towards us. Check out his paw!

There were also birds in that area.

And jellyfish.

Our plane.

Shots from our return trip past some glaciers are below. What an incredible day and we were glad that we did the tour and got such an amazing experience. Yes we could probably have gone to that Brooks River waterfall where the bears catch salmon - but you're there with 500 (literally) other people on a viewing platform and it's all very touristy and zoo-like. This way we were a group of 5 plus own personal guide and we got to see adult bears and cubs, seeing them fishing, clamming and foraging and experiencing these majestic animals close up.

Video from the return flight:

Venturing into the wild - with animal encounters

Yeah that first photo - only a tease as it didn't happen. We were there, but after being delayed twice the helicopter flight was called off due to bad weather. That was yesterday. Instead we went and got breakfast (see photo) and went souvenir shopping. Thankfully there were plenty of husband waiting benches :)

Today was our bus trip deep into the Denali Preserve, an 8 hour round trip with several breaks in between. This was not a tour, but rather a shuttle bus. We were told that the tour buses don't even go very far into the park and that all shuttles stop when you see wildlife so you have the opportunity to take photos. And you get this for a fraction of the tour bus price.

We departed at 8am after having had breakfast at the Salmon Bake at 7am. Of course Simone and I were hoping to catch glimpses of the wildlife that had so far eluded us, including bears, wolves, caribou, foxes and mountain sheep.

Nice glass art in the bus center.

Once again, the landscape was absolutely amazing and makes you feel really small and insignificant. At a place called Polychrome Pass the mountains were all different colours, set against the blue sky and green valleys. Stunning.

Polychrome Pass. No words.

After spotting the odd moose on our way, we finally saw our first bear! I have not cropped the photo below to show you how far away he was. We were all very excited of course and everyone took plenty of photos. Little did we know that this would be bear 1 out of 7. And just before our final destination we saw a bear about 25m away from the bus, having a good old scratch and getting ready for a nap. He/she was not bothered by the bus or the vehicles coming behind us.

 Of course I took heaps more photos but I'm only posting a few here. I love how you can see the palms of the paws and how big they are.

A little grin before bed time?

Photos from the destination surroundings. Eielson Visitor Center.
You can see how far we went on the map below. The red indicates how far you can go in your private vehicle. The bus goes much much further into the park.

These interlocked antlers were found in the wild. It is assumed that two bulls were fighting when the antlers interlocked and one pierced the eye of one bull. They both died and the remains were later found by rangers.

On the way back the bear was still asleep :)

After the trip we checked out some reflection lakes that Terry had told us about. We were lucky that the weather held up and this particular one was sheltered from the wind a bit, so it was nice and smooth.

 We grabbed an early dinner at the Salmon Bake.

These are Simone's halibut tacos. The fish was very nice, the tacos themselves not so much :(

My Denali burger met expectations.

And to finish off, a nice rainbow on the way home :) Thanks Denali, it was a great day!