We went bear hunting today. With a lot of miles to make before arriving at the Anan Bear Observatory, we started from Meyers chuck at an early hour hour and made our way north under light wind, calm seas, and surrounded by islands shrouded by clouds and mist. Beautiful.
The book warned us that the Anan River Inlet was at best a temporary anchorage and that we would want to leave crew onboard to keep an eye on the boat. It also said parks dept. personel would greet us. As it turned out, the former was true, the latter was not.
Incredibly, we arrived to find no one at the anchorage. Unfortunately the inlet was loaded with crab pots, making a difficult anchorage nearly impossible. Once on shore we found an empty parks dept shelter with a guest register. We marveled that the last entry in the register was in May and resolved to change that. Regrettably the pen was dry - mystery solved.
The info board at the trailhead noted that the season for collecting fees to access the observatory starts July 5th. Feeling a little smug that we would be able to enjoy seeing the bears without paying, we started up the trail. Along the way we found ample evidence of bears: lots of fresh scat, over turned rocks, and bear tracks.
A mile or so in we came upon the vacant observatory, a large deck structure overlooking the rapids of the Anan River. One can imagine observing salmon swimming up stream, bears feeding freely, and tourists watching from above. Unfortunately the day we were there, there were no fish, no bears and no tourists. We were feeling a little disgruntled about the absence of bears, but it was a beautiful hike.
We returned to the boat and headed north again toward what promised to be a secluded anchorage, only to find that it too was full of crab pots. There must have been fifty crab pots in that anchorage. That we were able to shoehorn between several of them is less a testament to our skill than the crabbers shabby job of packing the bay with as many pots as possible.
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