Hello All Day 4
As we are driving out onto the tundra, Lauren, our rover driver, shouts out that this is going to be a “Magical Day!” And was it ever magical! What we witnessed; I don’t think can adequately be described with words. Tom will make a video, but I don’t think that can even describe what we saw. You need the bite in the crisp below freezing air on your fingers holding the camera. You need to be present among these amazing animals surrounded by the vast expanse of treeless nothingness. You need to see the glimpse of a lone wolf running. Why is it alone and why is it running? Lauren tells us there is a pack of six wolves in the area. Later we see an Artic fox.
Suddenly, we see the mother bear with triplets find a seal skin. The smell attacks bears from all over. You see her risk her life backing off a huge male who would eat her cubs if he could. You see another mother with a single cub grab a piece of the skin. The cub freaks out at it’s first look at a seal skin. Then its decides this may be good and grabs a piece as mom heads off to a safer place dragging the cub behind her. Later you see the cub eating its first piece of seal way before it would usually. Then you see a huge, I mean gigantic male, come on the scene and finds his own piece of seal. Garrett had told us the bears do not share but these eight bears did not read that part of the brochure. Garrett and Lauren both are amazed and keep stating they have never seen anything like this before. We saw 22 bears in all.
In Churchill, they have spotted a bear coming into town each day we have been here. The bear patrol hit the streets and shoot off crackers that make a loud noise and the bears run off. They want the bears to associate humans as stress so stay away. Children learn to run into the nearest house if they see a bear which often they do. Garrett says the only people you see walking on the street are tourists who didn’t pay attention to warnings to stay inside. Churchill has a huge building that houses the school, hospital, movie theater, swimming pool, soccer court and everything else you can think of because being out is not safe. Even in the summer when bears are very lethargic due to the heat, if the people go out to pick berries, one picks while the other person with their gun spans the area for bears.
I am not a night owl but this is the only place I have ever been where the town shuts down about 8:00 pm. Last night we got back to the hotel after dinner and would have liked to just sit and hare a drink with our group, but no the bar was closed.
I will have to admit that this vacation is like I have stepped out of time as I know it and immersed myself into another world.
More to follow
Tom & Holly