Grandma's Grand Adventures: Herring Cove

We couldn't stay away from Herring Cove and the opportunity to see more bears and eagles. We went here as often as we could.

This is Momma Bear. It gives you an idea of how close we were at times. The bears would come up from the creek, which is to the left. They would cross this road and go into the forest to the right. We were all close to our cars and it would have been a mad scramble if Momma Bear decided to come our way.

But she just gives us a look and moves on into the forest.

This is Momma Bear in the forest with her cub.

Momma Bear is nursing her cub.

Momma Bear is nursing her cub just inside the forest, right in front of this car. Our cars are parked on the other side of the road.

Another view of Momma Bear and her cub.

They finished nursing and walked further up the mountain and into the woods.

This is the creek flowing into the ocean. It is high tide. At low tide we had walked all the way to the point of the trees and watched the salmon fishermen.

At first we thought these were seals. Turned out to be scuba divers.

This eagle appeared to be injured as he just laid on the rocks and when he did move it was very awkward. We made several phone calls to report this. We had to go down the road a bit before we could even get a signal. Some people came out. They agreed he looked injured. They went to the owners of the property (the zipline and bear watch). They were told that they knew about this eagle. It has a club foot and they get regular reports about him, but that he seems to get along just fine.

Some seals did finally appear and entertain us for awhile.

The birds in the trees are all eagles.

Another view of Herring Cove. The injured eagle is on a rock in the center of the picture. The boardwalk where we see all the eagles sitting while we watch bears is on the right. We would be watching from the other side of the creek. This is part of the bridge that crosses Herring Creek. The pictures above of the high tide area were taken to the left where the creek runs out into the ocean.

Just one of the MANY eagles.

More of the eagles.

Happy Birthday to Me. The Lord blessed me with a day filled with sunshine, so we spent it outside.

Downtown Ketchikan. The crossing guards are on duty whenever there are cruise ships in town. They help with the congestion in the downtown area. They get VERY upset and yell at anyone who tries to cross between the crosswalks.

We headed south out of Ketchikan.

We were early for our reservation at the Alaska Rainforest Sanctuary. So we went to see if the bears were out. There were no bears, but plenty of eagles.

At 1:00 we went to the Sanctuary...

This is our ride to the top...

We went up and UP into the beautiful rainforest.

The view out the window of our ride, looking down where we came from...

They took a group of us into this room to get our harnesses, hard hats, and gloves on.

This will be our first zip. It is a short one and we are on the lowest platform...85 feet in the air.

This is another view from the first platform. This looks to the spot where we watch the bears.

I am getting hooked to the zipline.

Off I go....

and go...

and go....almost there. It was so much fun. Juel didn't enjoy it like I did. She realized she is not thrilled with heights...the platforms made her nervous, so these are the only pictures she took of me. I do have one of me finishing the course that the company took, but I will have to wait to get home and scan it.

I did get a nasty cable burn on my arm on the longest zip. I got twisted and my arm rubbed along the cable. I worried that it would happen again and it did, but just a little twisted and a little burn on the next one. But then I seemed to get better control and did fine. I loved the zipping!

This is Juel making a zip. She did a great job, except that she came in a bit too fast on one of the platforms.

View from another platform.

The rainforest canopy....interesting to be looking out into the tops of the trees. Even though we were very high in the trees, one of the guides said we still had more tree above us than below us.

From one of the platforms we can see a black bear below us. I told Juel to look, but she said, "I have seen lots of black bears." She is nervous of the heights and looking over the edge was not something she wanted to do.

We had three of these rope bridges to cross. It was a great opportunity to really see the view!

At the end with our two guides. They were awesome, so patient with all of us.

Juel took me out for steak dinner at the Salmon Falls Resort. This is the view we had out our window. Wow! We watched for whales while we ate. No whales, but we enjoyed the relaxing scene and many passing boats.

My dessert...Snicker pie. Of course I had already taken a bite out of it before I thought to take a picture of it. It was delicious.

Juel's dessert...strawberry cheesecake. She said it was yummy.

The resort's harbor. I love harbor pictures.

Leaving the resort we noticed this large eagle's nest high in the trees.

Trying to show some of the majesty of these tall trees.

Ward Cove - I stopped and got a picture of this "sunken" boat. At high tide just the very top corner shows above the water. Today the tide was low so I got a good picture.

Can't end my birthday without going to Herring Cove to check on the eagles and the bears.

There was not much bear action, so we decided to go to the other side of the bridge and see what was going on.

The tide is out so this area (which otherwise is water covered) was now occupied by fishermen.

We had to climb down those rocks to get to the area below. At high tide this area is all under water.

The creek is so low the salmon are easy to spot as they struggle to get upstream.

This shows how far out we were able to walk.

The salmon eggs. The eagles go crazy for this. The eagles are perched and swooping all around. As the fishermen clean their catch, the eagles come it to clean it up and feast.

All the trees are loaded with eagles. Many eagles are also sitting along the shore.

This guy was so intent on his feast, he allowed us to get quite close for pictures. He kept his eye on us and we didn't get too close as we could see those talons and respect them.

More of the beauty of the eagles. I just love watching them.

Heading back in.

That is a salmon zipping through the water. The eagles don't bother to go after them as the fishermen keep the eagles well supplied with plenty to eat.