What an incredible day! The sun was shining, we are surrounded by incredible beauty, and we don’t have to go anywhere or look after anyone right now besides ourselves.
We took our coffee up on the flybridge (see above re: soaking it all in) and after a while, we spotted a mama bear and two tiny cubs meandering the edge of the cove.
At first, from a distance, I thought this cub had something around its neck, but it’s just a collar of lighter fur, which is apparently not uncommon for cubs and they usually lose it by the time they’re around 3 years old).
The other cub has a little patch of light fur on its neck too, but not as dramatic as its sibling.
It was so much fun watching the three of them scramble along the shore…mama forging again and babies running to keep up. It’s so quiet here we could hear every time they snapped branches or scuffed along the rocks.
Kevin made a video (also taken from the top deck of Airship) so you can get a feel for how cute these little guys were!
And here are a few more aerial shots (and a video) from this morning in Ell Cove. Alaska Quest left earlier so it’s back to being just us and the bears.
This afternoon we went out fishing for a bit (didn’t catch anything) but it was beautiful and there were whales breaching and tail-slapping in the distance, and a couple even closer to us for a bit. We did a little survey of Kasnyku Falls and and the surrounding bay when we were done fishing.
Back on Airship now, we’ll be cooking up some more of the coho that Kevin caught yesterday (I dunno, was that yesterday?) and making salmon tostadas for dinner. And tomorrow, pretty likely we’ll cruise down to Red Bluff Bay for a couple days.