To celebrate my brother Fred’s 10^th birthday my grandparents took him on a trip to the wilds of Alaska. I was only 5, but I vividly remember Fred’s descriptions of waters teeming with marine life – whales, puffins, more bald eagles than you could count – and woodlands full of bears and moose. He brought me back a necklace with a little gold shell on it, and every time I wore it I dreamt about the day I would turn 10 and have my own chance to explore Alaska’s wilds.

When my cousin Claire and I turned 10 my grandparents took us to Nova Scotia. We did not disguise our disappointment that the destination wasn’t Alaska. But we were promised that Nova Scotia was a lovely island teeming with birdlife. We set our hearts on seeing puffins.

There were no puffins. Fred had gotten the greatest adventure of his life and we’d gotten some seafood buffets. At least, that’s how two sullen 10-year old girls remembered it.

When Aaron and I started dating, he was informed that I was owed two things in life: a horse and a trip to Alaska.

When I found out that Alaska had made the short list of possible locations for the celebration of my mother’s 70^th birthday, I lobbied hard. And when we finally settled on Alaska, I pushed against the popular inland passage cruise from Seattle to Juneau. As an infectious disease epidemiologist, a cruise boat has about the same appeal as a hospital ward. I pushed for a flight to Anchorage, followed by a road trip around the Kenai peninsula, including a one-day boat ride. And I whole-heartedly threw my support behind my brother’s motion for a bear tour. The bear tour was not cheap, as you had to charter a private plane to take you to a remote wilderness inaccessible by road.  But when in Alaska.

The Nelson family has a Theory of Travel that the Amount of Time Spent in a Place should be proportional to the Time Spent Getting to the Place.

Vacation Time(Location 1): Flight Time (Location 1):: Vacation Time(Location 2): Flight Time (Location 2)

Thirty-five years of living on this earth have taught me that this Theory of Travel is patently false. As Aaron puts it, maximization is not the same as optimization. I whittled my parents’ two-week trip down to 5 days. Plenty of time to see a puffin.

 

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Day 1: Marthon don’t run the Mt. Marathon race….but sure put it on the bucket list

Aaron and I didn’t get picked in the lottery for The Mt. Marathon Race — a crazy 3,000′ scramble to the top Mt. Marathon, followed by a rapid descent back to town, all over the course of just three miles. It’s the country’s 2^nd oldest race (only the Boston Marathon is older). But we were in Seward on the day of the race and got a real taste for why this race is so famous. First off, the atmosphere is incredible. The small town of Seward swells on race day, held every year on the 4^th of July, becoming jammed with spectators who take the race as seriously as the Boston Marathon. This was a particularly exciting year for the race because a local Alaska cross country skier broke the course record set by Killian Journet last summer.

After the race Aaron and I took a short hike on part of the course. Well, it’s not really a ‘hike’, it’s more of a scramble. I haven’t scaled down cliffs like than since Finn took me and Sarah platypus-hunting in the Blue Mountains.

Day 2: Martha gets her puffin

Our trip was structured around two big events: (1) The Boat and (2) The Bears. Our primary reason for coming to Seward was The Boat. Of all the wildlife in Alaska (including the bears), Fred was most excited about the prospect of spotting orcas in the wild. I had waited 25 years to see a puffin.

On July 5^th, the day of my mom’s 70^th birthday, we took a full-day boat ride out of Seward to tour Resurrection Bay, the best way to see Alaska’s diverse marine wildlife. It was a rainy, overcast day, but that proved fortuitous as a large number of folks cancelled and we had plenty of room on deck to watch and photograph wildlife.

And despite the odds (orcas are typically seen only once per week), we had a gorgeous look at a pod of four orcas, including a calf. The trip was a bonanza of marine life: hoards of Stellar sea lions lazing on the rocks; playful otters tussling in the harbor; shy harbor seals popping their heads out of the water for a doe-eyed peek; a mother humpback whale romping with her calf, repeatedly slapping the water with her tail while her calf breached.

And a good thing we had Fred along to identify the diversity of marine birds: rhinoceros auklets, marbled murelets, phalaropes, jaegers, sooty shearwaters, red-faced cormorants, etc., etc. And, yes, I got more puffins than a girl could dream of. Horned puffins, tufted puffins, puffins flying, puffins bobbing in the water, rocky outcrops teaming with puffins. Twenty-five years worth of puffins. I also learned my new favorite word: puffling. As in, Duck:duckling::Puffin:puffling.

 

Day 4: Bearfest

The only point of Day 3 was to drive from Seward to Homer so that we could have our much-anticipated bear trip on Day 4. Maybe if it hadn’t been pouring rain the drive across the Kenai Peninsula would have been more memorable. But honestly, if there was a day for terrible weather, we couldn’t have picked a better day than Day 3.

On the face of it, a bear trip sounds like a terrible idea. A tiny plane flies you to a remote stretch of Alaskan wilderness called Katmai, drops you off, and sends your party off out into woodlands teeming with very hungry bears for several hours unaccompanied. I can’t be the only one to whom this seems like a great way to feed some famished grizzlies that have lost 40% of their body weight during a long hibernation with some fatty tourists.

Grizzlies are not to be trifled with. During our stay in Seward the local newspaper had just reported two recent bear attacks: one in Denali and one right along the drive from Seward to Homer. But for the price they were charging us, I figured there had to be sounder plan than Make Noise and Carry Bear Spray.

It turned out that making sure tourists didn’t become bear food was taken very seriously in Katmai National Park.  The whole thing is actually extremely well organized.  Yes, you have to take certain precautions to make sure you don’t turn into bear chow.  But I was very impressed with the park’s infrastructure.

• One thing in our favor is that July is the month that the salmon travel upriver in droves to spawn. Which for the bears means feeding frenzy. Bears have to catch about ten fish a day to get back the weight they lost during hibernation. Bears are much less likely to pay humans any mind when there’s loads of delicious salmon around.

• No food was allowed to be carried in the woods. Not even gum. All food had to be safely secured at the visitor center before we ventured out. For someone who doesn’t go out for a 30-minute run without snacks, the prospect of going snack-less for four hours almost caused a panic attack. But I recognized that it was in my own interests not to carry snacks in areas teeming with hungry bears.

• A wooden platform was built adjacent to the waterfalls that were the most popular spot for the bears to feed. Under no other conditions could a human possibly feel comfortable being that close to a dozen massive grizzlies.

• We took full advantage of the Bob Boom, making my dad walk in the front. For the first time that I can remember, we actively encouraged my father to talk loudly about politics.

Nothing can prepare you for the scene at Brooks Falls. More than a dozen massive grizzlies stand below the gushing water, waiting for the right moment to swipe at a fish. A young mother stands on the shore with three tiny cubs treed next to her. On the other shore, a hulking male rips the roe out of his salmon, gulls squawking and darting in for stray pieces. A bald eagle flies in, sending the gulls squealing in all directions. Mergansers bob in circles in an eddy in what seems like constant confusion over who the leader is.

Each bear had its own personality. All the bears cleared for the dominant male, who got the choice fishing spot and caught three times as much salmon as the others.

A young female bear with three tiny cubs struggled on the shore as she tried to protect her young from the marauding males while finding moments to dash out and catch fish.

While the larger, older males stood Zen-like for long periods of time in a single spot before gracefully snatching a fish with a quick swipe of the paw, an adolescent male did spread eagle belly-flops off rocks and spent most of the day looking like he’d just gone through a washing machine.

Whereas the dominant male carried new catches to a large flat rock to peacefully engorge, other males consumed their slippery catches right in the spot where they caught it under the waterfall. Even after decapitation the salmon still flops vigorously, and several forlorn bears watched their catches slip away in the swift current.

The bear pecking order was mostly set and most bears knew their place, skittering away immediately if a more dominant bear approached. But there were still tussles. Grizzlies are so powerful that most fights are over in a matter of seconds, with one animal quickly backing down rather than face the alternative. But one bear was covered with scars. Another was chased fully out of the river.

The greatest testament to how thrilling watching the bears was is the fact that I went four hours without any snacks and didn’t even notice. When 7pm rolled around and it was time to head back to have dinner, I opted to instead spend every possible minute with the bears and save my sandwich for the plane. I can’t think of a time that has ever happened before.

Watch the live BearCam at Alaska’s Katmai National Park

Lessons of a Nelson Family Vacation

1.  Longer is not better.  Previous Nelson safaris to Africa and Argentina have been 2-3 weeks.  Alaska 2016 was proof-of-concept that you can have an amazingly fulfilling trip in a much shorter period as long as you plan carefully.
2. Mt Marathon is definitely a race Aaron and I would like to get back to some day, either in the short-term or long-term.  It’s bloody hard to get into the lottery, though.
3. Alaska will bring out the amateur photographer in anyone.  Aaron has always been an aficionado of film, and we knew going in that photography would be a major part of the trip for him.  But whether I was just snapping landscapes with my iPhone or borrowing Aaron’s super lens to catch some bears at the end of the day at the falls, Alaska proves you don’t have to be a gear junkie to fall in love with photography.  I still need to learn about aperture and lighting and such.  But next time maybe I’ll even try some birds.
4. Shell out some $$ to do the big highlights.  The bear-viewing was more money than the Nelsons had ever shelled out for any half-day event.  We thought it would be cool, but it was hard for us to believe that it could possibly be entirely worth it.  It was, no question.
5. It’s never too late to fulfill a childhood dream.  One might have thought that 25 years later the puffins would have been anti-climatic.  I’ve declared that the new house Aaron and I bought is going to have a prominent puffin theme.