Greetings from Juneau!

This is my last day in Alaska and tomorrow early in the morning (around 5 am) I will start my long journey home. I have to change flights in Anchorage, Seattle and Copenhagen before I arrive in Helsinki at 22.35 pm on Sunday evening. To Juneau I arrived from Anchorage last Sunday and I had Monday free also, when I did a hiking to wonderful waterfalls and views along the Gold creek trail. This is my second day off here and I am planning to make a hike to the Mendenhall glacier. Juneau is known for gold mining and the glacier as well as a temperate rainforest.

The reason for coming here though was the bear viewing out to Pack Creek on Admiralty Island. This journey started on Tuesday morning with a flight out with a floatplane to no-where to our camping site near to Pack creek. There we put up our tents and went for kayaking. We were a group of 9 people, all the others were couples, plus the guides Tom and Andrea. The group, i.e. Diane & Bob, Liz & Richard, Ann & Betty, Andrés & Ingrid and me, was absolutely great and we changed email adresses. All had so much experience from traveling, so there were a lot to talk about and memories to share.

After sleeping there for one night, we kayaked out to Pack Creek, where you need a license permit to get there for viewing bears. We arrived at noon and went on to the viewing spot. Waited there for 1,5 hours, but no bears showed up at that time. In the morning there had been four bears, though. After a quick lunch we took the one mile trail to a tower walking through the rain forest and seeing different kinds of marks of bears. Up in the tower we waited, and waited, and waited. The only wildlife we saw was the salmon in the river and birds. Finally we went back to the viewing spot again and then, after 7 hours waiting, there was one sub-adult bear coming out to fish. He jumped and hunted for fish, and came pretty close to us, but then he went off and did not come again. But instead there was another sub-adult bear coming out and also a mother with a cub. The mother and cub were first playing in the grass, but when the cub saw the other bear it started to run after him. And the mother after the cub. It was really interesting and we had a very fabuolos show before we had to leave at 8 pm because of regulations. The bears came very close to us, only 50 feet or c 20 meters. That was really fantastic.

It was soon getting dark and when we had kayaked back to our tents, Tom made us a wonderful dinner with orso, salmon and wine, which we enjoyed with help of our flashlights.

The next morning it was raining and the day was rainy all day long. But Tuesday an Wedneysday had been very sunny and warm. That was something as we have not seen the sun many times here. We had a flight back to Juneau at 11.30 but before that only me and Bob and Tom went out for kayaking. That was great as there also was a humpback whale c 20 meter big in the same water. Not too close, though.

Yesterday evening when I had an Alaskan Amber - local beer at the hotel, I started talking to Dianne, who lives in Juneau. She was very nice and maybe I see her again today, as she offered to take me out to Douglas Island. But tonight I will also pack my things and get ready for coming home. Now I have to go for my last hike. It is cloudy, but not raining (yet?).

This is all from Alaska - a dream has come through. I mean true.