We had a really fun day out on the Tundra yesterday, and the hotel was comfortable and a nice place to stay. We got up early for breakfast again, Conrad grabbing an early danish so that he could take his medicine. We have a really nice group that we are paired with of 16 people, our guide Garrett is great, and our dedicated bus driver Bob is very good, he knows everyone's name already!
We had a nice breakfast again, and packed up for another day on the Tundra.
Bob delivered us to Lorne who was our buggy driver for the day, he was a funny guy.
We saw some bears in the distance for the first 45 minutes or so with Conrad Spotting a number of bears, and then we came across a mom and her 2 yearlings moving across the ice not too far away. The yearlings were following Mom until one of them decided he was going to do a bit of exploring. They were briefly separated and then Mom got them back moving again in the right direction together. They put on a show, sliding and looking in the ice for food.
We continued to press further into the Tundra towards the bay looking for more bears, next we came across some adolescent bears who spent a good bit of time sparring. There were 2 bears who spent a lot of their time together and a third who kept trying to join then and they kept chasing him off. We thought that maybe the 2 were siblings. There were rovers from a bunch of different companies all in the same area, and the adolescent bears were curious and wandered around the buggies, at times raising up to the back decks to see what they could see.
While we were stopped with the other rovers we also had a delicious lunch of hot soup, salad and sandwiches followed by loaf cake for dessert. The Driver Lorne was telling us the menu and as he was listing the sandwiches, which had a lot of ingredients, he would say - "Chicken and a bunch of stuff that I don't know what it is", "Beef, and a bunch of stuff that I don't know what it is". He was a really nice guy but serving lunch was his least favorite part of the day.
Next we saw a mom with 2 babies partially hidden in the willow. A male started to approach from across the ice and Mom got up and chased him away. It was pretty impressive.
Once the make retreated mom and babies snuggled back into the willows and we took way too many pictures. Lorne moved the rover at one point to give us a head on view for even better pictures.
Finally after seeing 21 bears we headed back to the headquarters. On the way back Lorne asked if anyone had a Birthday in October, which I did and so he let me drive the Rover for a short section of road. It was fairly simple to drive on a flat section of road, but the wheel needed to be turned a lot of times to round that curve ahead of me.
We then got the the rover headquarters where we met Bob who drove us into town. We had a short time to get settled in the hotel and then we gathered at the front to walk a short distance to a nearby building to listen to a local indigeneous artist to a talk. Her father had been in a residential school and it impacted his ability to really bond with she and her siblings. She talked about finding out about it later in life because he didn't talk about it much. It has influenced her art and she has become an activist for victims and families of the schools. She was an incredible artist and her husband is a bear guard out at the fort Merry site that we will go to on the last day. After the talk, Bob picks us up to go to the restaurant since it's after dark. We again enjoy a very nice dinner and head back to the hotel to get some sleep before an early wake up call for our last day on the Tundra.