Everything is going well here at Katmai. Happy Fourth of July! It was a pretty peaceful fourth here at Brooks Camp. Many bears are in camp! I was just washing some kale in my kitchen sink a few minutes ago, and I looked up and out the window and saw a sow with two yearling cubs scratching themselves against a tree just ten yards from my cabin. It is definitely July! I then watched as Imes, one of our bear technicians, and Brett, another ranger, came and pushed her out of camp. Imes was saying, “Come on, Mama.” Imes is from Arkansas and has a great accent. So, lots of bears and visitors is what’s going on.

I spent one whole week in the backcountry of Katmai a couple of weeks ago – June 21-28. It was amazing! Kara, myself, and Roy, our supervisor, spent three days at Sukoi Bay on the Katami coast and three days at Hallo Bay, about thirty miles south of Sukoi Bay. Our reason for the trip was to assist Roy and a filmmaker from Homer, AK, in shooting some footage for the park documentary that Roy is working on. This is a park documentary that should be finished some time next year. Kara and I went along to assist in carrying around the film equipment. We were both thrilled to get to go and see some of the beautiful parts of Katmai that are so far from Brooks Camp. Sukoi Bay is on the northeast side of the park, on the Pacific Ocean (Shelikof Strait). We camped inside the bay, right on the beach in a clearing of driftwood. We had an electric fence surrounding our camp and bear resistant food containers. Kara and I had a huge tent to share. It was great fun spending a week in a tent with my co-worker, Kara! Every evening, we went on a long excursion to film. Sukoi Bay has some breathtaking scenery, which is why Roy and the filmmaker wanted to film there. We hiked over to a lovely river behind our camp, and on our first night, we saw some bears playing on the river. They definitely noticed us and were checking us out. They seemed a bit leery of humans. We mostly filmed mountain scenery, beautiful sunsets and sunrises (I never did wake up for a sunrise, though), wildflowers, and some wildlife. We got a little bit of bear footage, but we also filmed a red fox that came past our camp about three times a day, a semipalmated plover and her nest, and a bald eagle and her nest. During the day, Kara and I got to explore the bay a little. We enjoyed being at the ocean and smelling ocean smells and finding ocean creatures on the sand. We also enjoyed looking at all of the bear tracks on the beaches. There were some beautiful rock features at Sukoi Bay that Kara and I hiked to and some cave-like formations as well. My diet was not the best on the trip. I ate many dehydrated backpacking meals which have a lot of sodium. We also ate lots of trail mix, Lara bars, and oreo cookies. I did also eat a few apples and some yummy bread from a bakery in Homer.

I also caught my first fish yesterday, July 5! It was an average-sized female adult sockeye salmon. She did not want to die, though. It took me at least twenty minutes to reel her in to shore. I will enjoy cooking that salmon!

The pictures above are all from my three days at Sukoi Bay in Katmai National Park. Next time, I’ll write about my three days at Hallo Bay and post pictures from there. I cannot download several pictures at a time, so that is why I am just giving you a glimpse of Sukoi Bay. Hallo Bay will be for next time.