Wrapping up the Alaska Adventure

Here's one last entry about the Alaska trip—a collection of various tidbits that I found interesting about the experience. In no special order:

—The reason the bears congregate in Katmai National Park, and especially in the area around Brooks Camp, several times a year is that that's where the salmon are. At this time of year, the bears are eating like crazy to bulk up for the long winter. A sockeye salmon in its prime contains a whopping 4,500 calories! Even the salmon that have "spawned out" and are way past their prime can provide a bear with 1,500 calories. Here's a shot of the salmon just drifting around in the water at Brooks Lake.

—Speaking of salmon, people in Alaska eat a lot of it too. My friend Julie and I had a bet as to how many times I'd be fed salmon in the course of a two-week trip. She said three times; I said two. Ha! In retrospect we were both on crack. I lost track of how many opportunities there were to eat salmon, and halibut as well. It was great! I did, however, take a pass on the salmon quesadilla at one restaurant, nor did I request salmon in my omelet one morning, which I could have....

—The bears in the interior of Alaska are much smaller than the ones at Katmai, because they don't have access to salmon. They live instead on berries and berry bushes. A guy at Kantishna, the place where we stayed in Denali National Park, made a memorable comment: “When you look at bear scat this time of year, you will never look at pie filling the same way again.”

—Alaskans are pretty preoccupied with daylight, or lack thereof. In the middle of June, of course, it's still light out at midnight, but by this time of year, they're losing anywhere from five to seven minutes a day of sunlight, depending on what part of the state you're in. The Anchorage paper has a little chart devoted to hours of sunlight, minutes lost, etc. When we were there, the sunset was around 9:00 p.m., which is maybe an hour or so later than in Pennsylvania.

—As we approached Denali National Park from the north, our NatHab guide, Andrea, pointed out the general area where Christopher McCandless went missing, in a tale made famous by Jon Krakauer's great book Into the Wild. That book has been made into a movie directed by Sean Penn; I think the movie just premiered this past weekend.

—Katmai National Park is where another wilderness tragedy took place: the death of so-called "Grizzly Man" Timothy Treadwell. He's the guy who thought he could live among the bears at Katmai, and did so for more than a dozen years before he and his girlfriend ultimately were killed by a bear there.

—The rangers at Katmai number the bears that they see around Brooks Camp. They don't ear-tag them or anything; they just can point to a bear and say "That's number 42" or whatever. Some of the bears also get names ("Reggie" is one that I remember). A notorious bear around camp is Bear No. 608, who tends to eat the welcome mats and fishermen's waders, among other mischief.

—The accommodations at Brooks Camp are not what you would call luxurious. We did stay at some fancy joints during the trip (the Alyeska Resort leaps to mind), but at Brooks were were staying at what started as a fishing lodge. We stayed in wooden cabins, four people to a room, with the room just barely big enough for two bunk beds, a small bathroom, a shower, and a sink. The walls were thin and at night I could hear the thunderous snoring of a guy from another group in the room next to ours. But the meals were terrific (steak teriyaki, halibut with remoulade sauce) and the staff was great.

Here's a shot of some baggage being unloaded in front of the main lodge, just to give you a feel for the rustic nature of the place:

—Finally, a word about our expedition leader, Andrea Reynolds.

She was wonderful! She loves Alaska and knows lots about it, and her enthusiasm for the area and the trip was obvious. I have a great mental picture of her after we got off the flightseeing plane in Denali, running down the road with her arms outstretched and making like an airplane—it was clear she was as giddy as we were from the amazing experience we had just had.

She has a great deadpan sense of humor and teased all of us in various ways at various points during the trip. In Talkeetna I was originally signed up for an optional float trip but asked if I could cancel it—I needed a morning to just relax and catch up on editing my photos. Andrea left a message with the outfitter to cancel my reservation, so when the van carrying a trailer full of rafts pulled into the driveway of our lodge just as we were ready to go out to breakfast, Andrea and I looked at each other and said, "Uh oh." But she talked to the driver and succeeded in getting me out of the raft trip. Later at breakfast, she was going over the logistics of our next stop—Girdwood, about 160 miles to the south. She turned to me and said, "By the way, Tina, there's a float trip from here that goes all the way to Girdwood, so I've signed you up for that. You should get there in about four days."

She has had a really interesting life—she spends most of her time guiding trips, from ones like the one we took to backpacking and kayaking trips, in the U.S., in New Zealand, and in other locations. She has no permanent home, but has belongings stored with friends and family in various spots all over the world. I asked her if she owned any furniture and she said, "Two tents … three Thermarests … and I also have lamps: headlamps!" I think we all envied her life a little bit.

Here she's joining us in photographing the bears from the viewing platform at Brooks.

I would travel with Andrea again in a heartbeat.