Ketchikan, Alaska. Neets Bay Bears go Salmon Fishing

Another awesome day in Alaska! We docked in Ketchikan this morning. It's the "Salmon Capitol of the world" - or so they claim. Ketchikan gets lots of rain or snow through out the year. The statistics say that it only doesn't rain 18 days of the year and we hit one of those days! No rain today!! Great day! Weather was sunny early, overcast later, but the day was incredibly warm. I think we hit 70 degrees. Duffy went on a boat ride to see the beautiful wildlife and scenery of the area.

Bill and I took a float plane to Neets Bay. This is a salmon hatchery and big black bear watching area. The bears are fattening up on the salmon that are swimming up the streams to lay their eggs. It is also an area with lots of Bald Eagles!! We saw them everywhere! We even saw a nest with young eagles ( nests can weigh up to 2,000 pounds) and the nests are used multiple years.

But the BEST part of the day was seeing two black bears come salmon fishing!! Actually, there are SO MANY hundreds of salmon churning the water in this small stream that the bears don't even have to work! It's ( excuse the metaphor) "like shooting fish in a barrel"! I shot a video of one of the bears that catches an enormous salmon and carries it to the shore and then leaves it there flopping around. It seems the bears get very particular because there are so many salmon, they only want females that are full of eggs. So the bear abandoned the male salmon on shore when he discovered there were no eggs to be had. So he went fishing again and we assume he scored a female with eggs because he carried the second salmon off into the trees to eat! It was a totally awesome experience! Our float plane trip couldn't have been nicer.

I'm posting a photo of a tree with bear scratch marks on the trunk. This is the way male bears mark a territory. Another male bear that wanders in will see how high the marks are on the tree. If its a taller, bigger bear than he is, he'll move on. All in all a fantastic day!! We continue to be blessed with absolutely amazing weather. How blessed we are!! Tomorrow is our last day on the ship! Packing will be the theme of the day! But we still have a few more exciting adventures to come in Vancouver so stay tuned!! We see Il Divo perform in Vancouver!!!