We were up and ready, breakfast finished and on the bus to the Tundra Rover Launch site by 7:30 this morning. It was still completely dark! We had a light snow overnight and it continued off and on all day in varying degrees of intensity.
Once onboard, our driver, Robert, headed out to the tundra. Almost immediately we were rewarded with our first bear sighting! The bear stopped at the rover in front of us and looked in the window, then ambled past and stopped at the rover behind us before heading back out across the tundra!
Ater watching him we moved along and soon spotted several ptarmagin near the willows.
Moving along we spotted bear number two, resting tucked in some willows.
We watched him for a while while we enjoyed hot chocolate, hot tea and cookies! Miranda and Krista gave us lots of information about bears, their habitat, and habits. There were a couple other tundra rovers parked a little further on and we had seen a couple bears headed toward them but then lost sight of the bears. When they pulled out, Robert manuevered our rover near where they had been parked and backed up near the edge of the tundra so our rear deck was facing the bears. We VERY quietly went out and they soon were curious and up to check us out.
They wandered up and walked under our back deck sniffing at our boots!
These two guys were so fun to watch - rolling in the snow, posturing, fighting, then ambling off together!
Moving on we went past several plovers and more ptarmagin before coming to our fifth bear of the day. This one was snoozing and only looked up once or twice! We stayed here and watched him while we had our lunch on the rover. What a feast! Hot soup, salad, sandwiches and brownies! We certainly are not going hungry on this trip!
After lunch we headed out looking for more bears. We didn't see any more but a few people spotted an arctic fox - Tobey was one of them! I could never find it in the binoculars, but several other saw it.Our rover driver let us have a try at driving. On the section we got to drive it didn't seem that hard. Of course, none of us had to negotiate hills, water, or ice!
Tobey wanted to know which way we were supposed to go!
It was kind of like driving the RV - only much higher up!
Yes, we are having fun! It was cold, but not terrible. The worst part was when we were on the back deck shooting pictures of the bears. The wind was blowing and without gloves our hands quickly got numb! Thank goodness we had handwarmers to put in our gloves when we came back inside. Tomorrow we will activate them BEFORE we go outside!
Back at the launch site, we backed into our parking spot, offloaded off the back deck and into our van for transport back to town. Dinner was at the Dancing Bear Restaurant - part of our hotel. It was good, but again, too much food! Tomorrow morning breakfast is at 6:15, so another early morning before we head back out to the tundra. Sleep well, friends!
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