Saook Bay and the Grotto

Our fourth day aboard dawned in Saook Bay. Some fellow travelers had seen a brown bear the evening before on a creek that enters the bay along a beautiful meadow. So of course we had to go tromping along the creek and across the meadow. Lots of salmon, flounder, and sculpins in the creek, and ravens and eagles in the air. But no bears for us this morning, just lots of forensic evidence of their activities. Case in point: this matted down "bear bed" in the meadow (our naturalist Karl is standing in it).

In the afternoon, we hopped into skiffs to explore the famed Grotto in Big Basket Bay (and, yes, there is a Little Basket Bay, we watched salmom there a bit earlier in the day). But first we enjoyed some distant looks at a momma brown bear and her two cubs running across the beach. The twins were a riot, several times running into the water to wrestle. Mom was a bit more serious.

The grotto itself was a gem, dripping with moss and lichens and little flowers. Very Garden-of-Edenish.