A Wedding Photographer’s time in Alaska – Part 1

Oh Alaska, where to start? As a huge wildlife and nature lover, I dreamed about going to Alaska for years! Finally in 2018, my dreams were realized when two of my best friends, Brad and Jessica, agreed to go with me. We didn’t travel the typical way, by cruise ship, instead we wanted to experience it on land. We flew into Anchorage Alaska, and began our journey from there. With Alaska being almost 4x the size of California, we saw only a small portion of it, but what we witnessed was breathtaking! We visited in late August to the first part of September which is the beginning of Autumn in Alaska! Cooler temperatures prevail during this time, and the hills were green with some floral still appearing on our mountain hikes. We started in the Anchorage area and traveled down towards the Russian River on the Kenai Peninsula. I was glued to the window of the car, taking in all of the gorgeous scenery around me. It is so big and vast. In Alaska, it is known that your mind will play tricks on you making you think that the mountain you are viewing is smaller or a distance isn’t as far when in reality that mountain is huge and that distance stretches on for miles and miles. Our minds try to take the vastness we see and turn it into something more manageable, but Alaska defies our minds with its wildness and vastness! And I loved it for that!

The beginning of our trip started with a wildlife sanctuary where we saw wolves, bears, and bison among others! It was great to get a close up look at these beautiful animals! And you couldn’t beat the backdrop of the glaciers!

We camped down the road from this glacier location for our first night on the move. A bear had been sighted at our campsite only days before, and it made me super excited! As much as I love seeing animals in wildlife sanctuaries, there is nothing like experiencing them in the wild. Even though it was a little nerve racking setting up camp in an area where a bear could come through, it was also thrilling and exciting. But no bear came to camp that night, and so we set off to explore some glaciers instead! We hiked to Byron Glacier, and it was stunning!

On our drive down to Seward, we detoured to the Russian River in Kenai. My big bucket list item for Alaska was to see the Brown Bears fishing for salmon. So we spent the day driving around, talking to rangers and campers to get ideas of where the bears hang out. After spending 3 hours searching, we were told that the bears come almost every night to a popular fishing area but they wouldn’t come for another 3-4 hours. Brad and Jessica, who had humored me thus far were reaching their limit as we had plans to spend a fun evening in Seward. I worked all my persuasion and sweet talk skills to convince them to stay as this was my chance to hopefully see the bears fishing for salmon. Being the amazing friends that they are, they agreed and we spent our down time hiking before going to the location we were told about. We spent an hour walking up and down the mile long board walk, checking the different sites to see if a bear appeared. The salmon were plentiful, slowly making their way upstream. At this time, most of them have completed their journey, have deposited their eggs, and are coming to the end of their life cycle. It was neat seeing so many of them in the river! It was getting later, and we had settled at one spot with a couple who also were looking for the bears. We had a wonderful time talking with them, and were enjoying the beautiful weather when out of the corner of my eye I saw movement. I turned to behold a gorgeous and huge Brown Bear walking along the river bank! In the blink of an eye I whipped up my camera to start snapping away while exclaiming, “THERE IS A BEAR!”. Everyone talked hushed and excitedly as we saw a mother bear and her two almost full grown cubs come to feast on the salmon. Momma Brown Bear and her one cub grabbed a fish and went off to eat. But one of the cubs came back to the river for more. He was like a puppy playing with a new toy. He would submerge his whole head underwater to come up with a fish only to drop it and try again! We watched him play with the fish and stomp around in the water for 30 minutes, and it was one of the best wildlife experiences I have had! One point he came a bit too close to the dock we were all on, and as he looked up at us and took a step forward to the steps leading up to us, we collectively took a step back. The raw power he had in his muscles was majestic. He was stunning, strength personified, a force of God’s creation. To all of our relief, he turned again to focus on the salmon to feast to his heart’s content. But I will never forget that experience with him!

After our encounter with that Momma and her two full grown cubs, I was on cloud nine and so extremely excited! It was everything I prayed for, my bucket list item was reached and I got photos to proudly show from my experience! But God wasn’t done yet! On our walk back on the boardwalk to the car, we looked out and saw another momma bear with 3 smaller cubs! We stopped to photograph them, one of the cubs was in the river and took notice of us. He stood up on his hind legs and looked huge and intimidating with water dripping from his long claws as he stared at us. But once he was down on all fours, you could see he was still a baby! But still, I wouldn’t want to mess with babies or mama bear! The Alaskan Brown Bear is bigger than their relative the Grizzly! With weight that can range upwards to 1300 pounds, they can even outweigh some Polar Bears! They are huge and incredible to see in the wild! I felt so blessed by seeing not just one bear that day, but seven in all!

This was just the beginning of our trip, and there was so much more to experience! This is part 1 and I will continue on with part 2 to give more details of our time in Seward and Denali National Park!