Day 9-12: Clam Gulch, Soldatna, Seward and Homer

Day 1: We decided to stay in a B&B, called The Moose is Inn  at Clam Gulch, a small town, with very friendly people. This location was central to Seward and Homer, both locations we wished to visit over the last couple of days in AK. After a good night's rest, we head out to the beach (a mile from our B&B). We were lucky to catch a spectacular view of the Mt Redoubt, an active volcano, from across the ocean...it kind of made our day!

View of Mt Redoubt

We drove towards the little town of Soldotna. We had planned to take the day easy, probably a hike or two, chill out by some lakes, and so on. We stopped by Lake Tustumena for lunch. We also squeezed in a hike around Skilak Lake, part of Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. Pretty views on a bright sunny day...

Day 2: We decided to explore Seward, a town N of Clam Gulch. It is a beautiful city, studded with harbors. We spent at least an hour, exploring one such picturesque harbor.

Views from a harbor

Do stop by a restaurant in the downtown and indulge in some sea food...We helped ourselves to lets say, gourmet burger place...it was pretty good!

A couple of miles from downtown is Exit Glacier (Herman Leirer/Exit Glacier Road at mile 3 Seward Highway). There are many short hikes that take you to different views of the Glacier. The closest view is a easy 20 minute hike. There are also tours that take you climbing on the glacier. Yes you have to go with them, because you need special kind of footwear. Park rangers conduct free educational walks throughout the day. 

Day 3: Bear viewing!!!

We started early on our last day in AK for a bear viewing trip to Katmai National Park. The drive to Homer is an hr, from Homer we boarded our plane booked through KBay air. The 2.5 hr flight to Katmai was so beautiful, we saw volcanic mountains, snow covered peaks, glaciers and...bears! Yes, although I knew bears are huge, I was amazed that you could see them so distinctly from up so high!

As soon as we landed on the beach, we were briefed about the rules of staying together. Bears never attack people as long as you respect their personal space and don't intimidate them. The tour guides explained to us that at any point in time, we as a collective need to appear larger than the bear, and stay as a pack. We walked through piles of bear poop (and I don't use the word pile loosely!) to the 'viewing area', which is an area designated by the park officials for tourists. We saw some bears just going about their daily business, which largely comprises of grazing. This is a special season because it is the first time that the females bring out their cubs to introduce them to the rest of the pack. We saw a few cubs too! The way the cubs rolled around in the wet grass reminded me of my crazy dog, playfully covering himself up in the dirt and throwing a tantrum at the same time. I wanted to take the cub home! After watching them for sometime, we moved to another viewing area, where there were 2 cubs a 1 mama bear chilling out in the grass. They didn't really seem to be bothered by our presence...In fact I wondered if the mama bear was telling the cubs "Look, I told you this is a great viewing area...These are the funny smelling 2-legged creatures I wanted you to see...they drop down from the sky, with black boxes that click and flash when they see you. No, they are not dangerous, they just smell and sound funny...What's amusing is they will follow you where ever you go... Watch!" And the bear family slowly walks away, while we hurriedly packed up our camera and tripod and follow them! I guess she was right :)
Make sure you collect free memorabilia from the beach...no, not bear poop but beautiful green jade stones and interesting looking sea shells.
5 hrs later, we boarded our flight, and flew back to Homer. The drive back to Anchorage was quiet and mostly reminiscing the past 2 weeks...What a trip! Highly highly highly (have I stressed highly enough?) recommend it to everyone who seeks adventure, nature  hikes and wildlife...