As noted in my last post, we had terrible wildlife viewing luck during our trip to Alaska, but we had an ace up our sleeve. Right before we left for the trip, a friend mentioned two national parks that almost guaranteed a bear sighting – Katmai National Park and/or Lake Clark National Park.

In my ignorance, I started looking at how we could drive to one of these parks and from where, only to discover there is no way to get to either of them without taking a boat or flying. As an aside, Alaska has more pilots per capita than anywhere in the U.S. (and some say the world) as the forbidding geography and dearth of roads – 80% of Alaskan communities are not connected by roads – make flying the only option to get to many places.

By that time, nearly every tour/flight to these parks was booked – one of the downfalls of planning travel to popular places very late in the game. After days of research, I managed to find two seats with a company that had decent reviews, but we had to take an afternoon slot even though that is riskier for weather. In fact, when the day finally arrived, we woke to a rainy, gray morning – not a good sign for a flight over the bay to either park – but the timing ending up working in our favor! Katmai was out for that day overall due to the weather, and the morning tours to Lake Clark were plagued by light rain.

But by 2 pm, when we took off from Homer, the skies were still gray, but clearing, and the rain was gone. A one-hour flight carried us across Kachemak Bay and onto the landmass that contains Lake Clark National Park. There were four of us and a pilot/guide in the tiny Cessna that swooped down and skidded to a stop on the beach.

In our thigh-high hip waders, we exited the plane and began a three-hour walk on the shores of Lake Clark National Park. We had finally arrived in an Alaskan locale where bears were not only plentiful but also completely focused on digging up clams and nearly oblivious to our presence.

Within our first half hour on the beach, a bear came scarily close to us, but as we’d been told, she barely glanced our way and lumbered along on her quest for food. Anytime we were even a little bit close to a bear (it all seems close to someone who does not regularly see bears!), we were asked to kneel or crouch down low and stay still.

The company we used did not allow guides to carry any guns (we approved!), but they did carry marine flares that are loud, bright, and foul-smelling and are only used in the event a bear comes much too close and seems aggressive. In their history, they’d only had to shoot off a flare one time, our guide said, and it successfully warded off the bear.

As another aside, while we did not seem to be bothering the bears in the least, and rarely came very close to them or even within their sphere of awareness, it still felt like we were encroaching on their turf to some extent. Perhaps they have just become habituated to the small planes they see and hear? But that isn’t normal or natural. Was it significantly worse than hiking in their habitats? I don’t know! It was a great outing, but I’ve been thinking about it since we went.

The rest of the bears we saw that day were farther away, but it was still great fun to finally see so much wildlife, especially the mama bears with their cubs frolicking beside or behind them.

While the bears were awe-inspiring, perhaps the cutest animal of the day was a little red fox. We’d been in the park many hours by this point, and J decided to sneak off behind a tree as a “rest stop.” The rest of us were staring into a field hoping to spot a few more bears when this adorable little fox danced up, checked us out, and then

headed directly behind us toward J and his tree! We all started to giggle, which J later said he thought was us being rude, but then he almost jumped (the rest of the way) out of his pants when the little guy stopped and looked up at him.

He proceeded to amuse us for several more minutes and then scampered away, a very sweet farewell to Lake Clark National Park and our afternoon brush with Alaskan wildlife.