We woke up in Ketchikan this morning, visibility at approximately crap meters.As we were booked to take a seaplane to Neets Bay this wasn't the best possible news.
Fortunately it cleared up very quickly, and by the time our seaplane took off there were only low-lying pockets of cloud. So low-lying we actually flew over them, giving us breathtaking views of the islands around Ketchikan, their peaks jutting out of lakes made of cloud.
There was one patch of cloud we had to descend through to land in Neets Bay. Now one of the downsides of small planes is that turbulence is much more noticeable, especially when the rear of the plane begins to yaw towards the front.
I have no idea if these planes can go into a flat spin, and have no desire to find out. Judging by the amount of bone-crushing pressure Emma put on my right hand she found the turbulence even less enjoyable than I did.
We passed through and landed without incident into a beautiful mist-shrouded setting, where we were met by our guide, Puck.
Seriously, Puck, as in "hockey puck". He looked like a wild Alaskan woodsmen, with a long grey beard and a tattoo on the side of his neck.
Neet's Bay was established as a salmon hatchery, now the largest in the world. Something like 12 million a year - not sure about that.
The salmon come in to spawn, and the hatchery take the eggs and the sperm from the salmon (if you're squeamish you may not want to know how. Hint: it involves knives), fertilise the eggs, and dump them into tanks. The "parents" are used as fish meal, while the "children" are managed through various stages until they're around 6-8 cm long (3 inches) and released into the ocean.
Not all at once, our guide pointed out. That tends to attract killer whales. Scratch one year's hatching.
Interesting as all that is, it wasn't why we came to Neet's Bay.
Walking along the path from the dock to the river the guide told us we should remember to look up into the trees. We looked up, and there about 10 meters/30 feet up was a black bear.
That's why we were in Neet's Bay.
The bear took no notice of us. Black bears generally aren't interested in people, so there was no danger he'd climb down and make trouble. Brown bears (AKA grizzlies) do like a bit of trouble.
He took us to the river, and we waited in a light drizzle hoping another bear would show up to feed at the river.
We didn't get another bear.
We got two.
The first one ambled down around lazily swept a salmon out of the river, and started chomping away. After a few minutes he popped it in his mouth, wandered halfway back to the woods before round two of the chomping.
Several minutes later a second bear showed up, and headed towards the river. So now we had two to watch, maybe 15 meters/50 feet away.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay cool.
As I said to Puck as I was getting back on the plane, "best animatronics I've ever seen."
"Should be," he said, "we spent a fortune on 'em."
Jokes aside it was freaking AWESOME. Many shades of awesome. Love it.
Back in Ketchikan we carefully avoided the jewellery shop were we encountered Joe on our first visit (we still awake in cold sweats at the memory of that; details in our first travel blog), and wandered around the historic section of town for a while. This time the tide was up, sparing us the sight and smell of dying salmon.
Worn out, Emma collapsed around 9.30, while I caught anothe movie on the top deck. It was freezing, and we had another early night, so I should have simply gone to bed.
But it was The Avengers, and I've only seen it three times. I can sleep on the next sea day.
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