There are no roads connecting Hoonah to the rest of Alaska. They must travel by ferry, small plane, or boat to go anywhere. Needless to say, when our ship of 3,000 passengers landed (along with 2 other ships on the same day), the tiny town came alive with tourists. Although it was annoying to see tourists walking up to private residences to take pictures.
One of the things we most looked forward to for our day in Icy Strait Point was the promise of seeing whales from the shore walk. There were several people who enjoy many great sightings, even some sitting right next to us on the ship. But we were often just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just missed it. But fortunately we did get to see this one.
And just above where the whale statue is there was a bald eagle sitting in his nest. It was like he was posing for us. And then his cousin went flying across nearby but again, couldn’t capture in flight.
The best sign of the trip so far was this one.
There are more bears than people. As we learned on the ship, there is estimated one coastal brown bear per every square mile on this tiny piece of land with less than 1000 inhabitants. They love it here because of the abundance of salmon which makes them often larger than inland grizzlies. So, when we saw these obvious bear claw markings on the ground, we knew that we were visitors and we didn’t want to be in their way when they came back to roam for food along the seashore.
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