After a lovely breakfast at the Highland Glen with the best waffles I have tasted we headed off to the Shopping Mall and the Walmart superstore for a little retail therapy. We had seen early morning television coverage of a bush fire affecting a forest area close to a Highway so I thought I ought to see where it was - it was near McHugh on Highway 1 just the way we had to go to Whittier. We could see the smoke rising over the hills from the shopping mall so hope...

We were collected form the Kodiak Inn at 9.15am by Kingfisher Air and taken to the lake where their planes operate from - as the winds were strengthening when it was time to depart we had to be taken across to the wider waterway on the other side of Near island, where Andrews Airways operate from, to take off. We went in the bus while the plane floated round! It was a little bumpy but the trip took us over snow capped mountains, through passes, over lakes - we s...

It dawned another beautiful day - the tide was at its lowest and Kukak bay outside our room looked as if the plug had well and truly been pulled. This meant a longer hike to the boats which were in another bay and just floating. The bay was flat calm as we set off and remained the same all trip - the first day it was t-shirt weather for almost all the trip. That said the bears were nowhere to be seen - we eventually found one young bear walking along the beach...

In dawned another beautiful day on our last full day here. We took a packed lunch and stayed out the whole day - we started with Perry and Angela, who was unshackled from the lodge for a day, and swopped boats at lunchtime and finished with Chris. This enabled Perry to go with the other group to lift the crab pot they had set yesterday. We had a sweepstake on the number there would be in the pot - last time there were 44 - we guessed in the thirties - but Margare...

It dawned bright and sunny - hurrah - there was still a chill in the air but hot enough to have lunch on the deck! The day started slowly one young skittish bear who came to the shore saw us then ran off after thinking about it for a while. We later saw a more confiding teenager who walked along the shore and only moved away when the boat scrapped the bottom - but he was good looking and fresh faced - no scars like the big bears. I focused on the bald eagles to ...