Had plans to do stuff like clean the bottom of my boat this weekend, but when Sara said she wanted to go on a weekend trip on the Sea Lion, it was easy to drop everything and go. As usual, she spent the early part of Friday planning and getting everything ready while I ran whale watch boat. We left in the evening and ran down to Green Cove for the night. Saw a deer on the beach there. We could not go to our destination of Olivers Inlet until the next day as we had to wait till high tide.
Next day we ran up to Olivers Inlet. Sara got on the bow to look for rocks as we ran up the channel on the high tide. Always a bit of a white knuckler through there but we got through with no problems. Sara wanted to see some bears and about 2/3 of the way in I saw one on the west shore. We idled up to where it was feeding on beach grass, and I killed the engine. I tried to ease over the anchor and keep the chain quiet but either the noise spooked the bear , or it winded us, but in any case, it took off into the trees. We heard some weird squealing sounds in the woods and couldn’t tell if it might be the bear or a raven – ravens can make all kinds of sounds.
We enjoyed the sunny day and later on the bear came back. It may have been a sow as it had rub marks on its hind quarters where a male could have been hanging on, as it’s mating season. A while after seeing the one bear on the west shore, another larger bear was lumbering down the east side of the channel. I thought maybe a boar looking for a sow. It walked all the way to the head of the bay and we never saw it again.
Another peaceful overnight on the boat and up and going at 3 am to catch the high tide out. Back in Juneau before 6 am and now napping the rest of the day.