The sun felt warm on my back, but not quite enough to dispel the early morning chill that enveloped the air above the water of the Cook Inlet. I eventually had to move into the cabin of Captain Mel’s boat, the Alaskan Sportfisher, as it raced across the stretch of water towards Chinitna Bay, on the Katmai Peninsula. We were heading to the Katmai because that’s where Captain Mel said we’d find bears.

Coastal brown bears, or grizzlies as they’re more commonly known, like to come down from the hills of the Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, surrounding Chinitna Bay, to prowl the mud flats which appear during the low tide and dig for clams. Captain Mel, who had been guiding fishing excursions throughout the Cook Inlet for nearly thirty years before concentrating on bear-viewing trips, was a fountain of information about both the bears and the area. He brought his boat close to the shore where the receding tide was already shallow enough for us to slip over the side into knee-deep water (we had been outfitted in fishing waders on the way over) in order to walk towards the bears we could see had already started feeding, but not too close that the boat would be stranded by the low tide and we’d have to wait twelve hours for the next high tide to refloat the boat. Our group trudged through the water, apprehensive about approaching grizzlies who might be just a little protective about their natural ‘raw bar’, but, true to Captain Mel’s briefing, the bears were more intent on sniffing out the razor clams below the muddy surface then they were about the encroaching humans. We wandered freely along the mud flats for a couple hours between the three bears on this stretch of beach before moving back to the boat for the forty-five mile return trip to Anchor Point, back on the Kenai Peninsula.

We had started our Alaskan adventure five days earlier. After flying from Denver to Anchorage, we took our rental car south around Turnagain Arm, an extension of the Cook Inlet, first stopping at Potter Marsh, where we were able to see a moose cow and her two calves moving through the wetlands just off the Seward Highway. Continuing on, we followed the Chugach Mountains along the western edge of the peninsula to the port town of Seward. Just south of town the Kenai Fjords National Park attracts visitors to it’s wildlife-rich waters and numerous fjords hiding tidewater glaciers (those ice flows that reach down to the waters edge). Onboard the Spirit of Adventure, we traveled down through Resurrection Bay, across the Gulf of Alaska and into Aialik Bay to the Holgate Glacier, seeing humpback whales, sea lions, porpoises, otters and puffins along the way.

Crossing the Kenai Peninsula bound for Homer we drove a section of dirt road through the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge that ran above the Kenai River and Skilak Lake. Interestingly, it wasn’t the wildlife that gave us the ‘wow’ moment here, but the abundant wildflowers that stunned us. Coming to a stop above the lake in an area that had been ravaged by a 2019 wildfire, we came upon a hillside carpeted with fireweed, a magenta-colored flower that provided a sharp and beautiful contrast to the charred remains of the spruce, cottonwood and birch trees that had covered the area. We had never before seen such a profusion of wildflowers as this.

Arriving in Homer in the afternoon of Day 3, we found our lodging, checked in and then made our way to the famous ‘Homer spit’. The two-mile long sand spit extends into Kachemak Bay and hosts campgrounds, a boat harbor and most of Homer’s restaurants and tourist shops. Homer is known as Alaska’s halibut fishing capital, and recently caught specimens of the fish were on display at just about every dock lining the waterfront. We dined on halibut fish and chips and pan-seared halibut with crab risotto at a seaside restaurant, then retired back to our accommodation, which offered a stunning view across the bay to the Kenai mountains, still easily viewable in the bright light of 9 pm – at least two hours before the sun would set (we’ve yet to see an Alaskan sunset). The following day we boarded Bay Excursion’s water taxi, which would shuttle us across Kachemak Bay, dropping us off on a stretch of beach on the edge of Kachemak Bay State Park, where we found the trailhead for the Glacier Lake trail. Following the trail, originally through a forest of spruce, then across a gravelly flat interspersed with alder, we came upon Glacier Lake, which was perfectly placed at the foot of the Grewingk glacier and contained pieces of the glacier that had calved off and floated towards the beach. After marveling at the glacier and the multi-hued chunks of ice floating on it’s surface, we completed the hike to Halibut Cove, which could very well be one of the prettiest coves we’ve ever seen. On schedule, the water taxi chugged into the cove, maneuvered to the rock outcropping at the trails edge, and whisked us back across the bay.

After the next day’s boat trip over to the Katmai peninsula for bear-viewing, we departed Homer for a night in the small community of Girdwood, nestled at the base of the Alyeska ski resort in the heart of the Chugach mountains. The next day we would head further north to one of Alaska’s crown jewels – Denali National Park. Stay tuned.