SUMMER ADVENTURES: Brooks Camp and Bears, Bears, Bears

Part 5 (This series started with the July 22 post.) A little background: Brooks Camp, in the Katmai National Park, boasts the largest concentration of brown bears in the world. Kodiak Island is just offshore. Grizzlies and brown bears belong to the same species, but Alaska’s coastal brown bears are bigger than their inland kin because of their protein-rich diet of salmon. Brown bears can weight up to 1,500 pounds. Everything that comes into Brooks Camp, including food, supplies, and tourists, comes by water or…

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SUMMER ADVENTURES: Our First Close Encounter with a Bear and Very Expensive Pizza

After returning to the airport in Gustavus, we flew to King Salmon, the last stop before Brooks Camp. It was another beautiful flight, executed flawlessly by Ron, our pilot. There was one complication after we landed, however. We were greeted by a bear on the runway. We quickly retreated back to the plane and closed the door to wait for our transportation to the hotel. Ron radioed in a report about the bear while it roamed around, in and out of the brush-filled ditch by…

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