The Bears of Summer - Alaska Travelgram

Big brown bear fishing near the mouth of Silver Salmon Creek in Lake Clark Nat’l Park

I’m still recovering from a great visit to the mouth of Silver Salmon Creek in Lake Clark National Park. The creek is across Cook Inlet from Ninilchik. As its name implies, it has a big run of silver salmon. When the bears weren’t fishing, we did our best to catch a few.

Juno Kim proudly displays her very first fish caught on a rod and reel. Tim, the master fixer, stands to the right. He knew where to cast and worked overtime with a big net to land the fish!

Planes land on the beach with day-trippers from Anchorage, Kenai and Homer. Some were fishing, but most had lots of camera gear to photograph the bears. Although I didn’t go inside, there’s a nice-looking lodge right on the banks of the creek: Silver Salmon Creek Lodge.

Mama Bear + three cubs…keeping an eye on fishermen across the river.

We’ll have some more photos soon…just wanted to give you a taste!

This bear came galloping down the beach.

When this bear (above) came running down the beach, we all reeled in and backed up off the beach to give him some room. You can see the green roof (and antenna) of the lodge in the background. Also, that’s the lodge’s boat that they use for deep-sea fishing.

A park service volunteer gave us a map with a stamp to show where we were. Right above the word “Clark” on the stamp is an icon of a little house. That’s our location–at the Silver Salmon Creek ranger station! Pretty good luck for Friday the 13th!