2019 Alaska Trip - Day 33 - Library, Totem Park, & First Brown Bear Sighting, Sitka, Alaska

As promised, I went to the library this morning and stayed all day. But, while "working", I enjoyed this great view out to Crescent Bay.

How many libraries have a view like that?

Steve stayed at the campground and re-hiked the Mosquito Cove Trail and the Estuary Life Trail and generally enjoyed his alone time in the afternoon.

Linda and Esther went to the Sitka National Historic Park, but three cruise ships were in and it was crowded there. They by-passed the visitors center and the exhibits and headed out to the beach which they had pretty much to themselves.

With binoculars, I probably could have seen them from the library. As it was, they found the beach a bit disappointing for beach combing and didn't stay long.

Eventually, I headed back to the campground arriving around 6:00 p.m. Burgers were on the menu for tonight, so I fired up the Blackstone and cooked burgers, sauteed some onions and mushrooms, and added cheese. Linda finished up by frying some eggs to add as a topping.

When it was time, she loaded her cheeseburger up with an egg, bacon, and avocado, and then added asparagus spears. It was an amazing burger experience - one of our best ever.

If that wasn't enough for our evening, there was more.

As we finished up dinner, Sitka resident Darlene stopped by. She and her husband, Leonard, came to our 2017 RV-Dreams Fall Rally and our 2018 Boondocking Rally. Leonard left the night we arrived here in Sitka to go on an epic kayaking trip so we just missed him, but I happened to run into Darlene at the library this morning.

She stopped by this evening to give us some Sitka spot shrimp and a package of cod. She's a native Alaskan from Nome, and she also brought part of her beach combing collection, much of which was found there. So now Linda wants to go to Nome, and I have to figure out how to work it into the schedule, if possible.

After Darlene left, we sat around the campfire until I eventually did my evening chore of walking the trash down to the bins. This time, though, I didn't take my binoculars or camera for my return trip along the estuary boardwalk.

I stepped out into the bird viewing shelter, and sure enough a large brown bear was in the meadow. I exited the boardwalk and ran down the road to our campsites where I knocked on Steve & Esther's door - "Bear!" was all I could say and then I hustled to our rig to grab my camera and let Linda know.

Steve, Linda, and I walked briskly, but quietly to the boardwalk from the campground end. When I first saw the bear, it was close to the entry from the campground, but fortunately it had moved to the middle of the meadow in the taller grass.

It was getting close to 10:00 p.m. and the lighting was bad, but I still snapped pictures. We could see the distinctive brown bear hump. Then it started moving diagonally toward the boardwalk and bird viewing shelter giving us a better look.

Steve headed back to the campsite, and I thought he was going to get Esther, but we stayed focused on the magnificent animal.

The boardwalk rises up above the estuary several feet in the air as it approaches the shelter, so Linda & I quietly made our way in that direction as the bear munched on the grass, looking up occasionally to see the cars parked on the causeway and the few people in the shelter.

Safely high above the bear, Linda & I watched and listened to the crunching of the grass as it ripped it out by the roots, and we could hear it sniffing the air. It was too dark by that time to get any more photos, so we just viewed it silently making sure we didn't make any noise or movements that might distract it. As it was, we had several moments where it was only us and the bear as it walked back along the tree line out of view of everyone else.

As it got darker, we wanted to head back to the campground while we knew where the bear was. We safely moved down the boardwalk while it continued to eat grass well away from where we needed to exit.

So, my nightly walks finally paid off, and we had a peaceful, close experience with our first Alaskan coastal brown bear. My boring ol' library day sure had a memorable ending.

And with that, we called it a night .... smiling about what we were just able to witness less than a quarter of a mile away from our RV. Also, we were glad to be inside our RV where a middle of the night walk to the bathroom wouldn't be terrifying.