The lodge is on a floating pontoon, that caters for guests from May to October, with up to 16 guests at a time during the salmon run season of late August/Sept, but as we were there a little early, our group was only 10, incl ourselves, good friends Stephen and Denise, Julie and Helmut from Bundaberg, Robyn and Howard from Perth and Maria and Win from Holland. We all got along great and everyone had a terrific sense of humour. Tom and Marg (she’s Australian), started the lodge with a couple of local brothers Lance and Lloyd in 2004, and expanded the lodge in 2014 to what it is today.
Our daily activities were a morning and evening 3 hour bear viewing outing and a daily mystery tour. Our 3 meals a day were exquisite, plenty of snacks and drinks of all kinds available all day, our rooms were huge....we were spoilt from start to finish.
Gearing up in camos for our bear viewing
There was nothing like the excitement of spotting our first bear which we followed along the shore for about 10 minutes.
The bear scouting was a bit hit and miss, but we were entertained by all the other wildlife that we could spot, our knowledgeable and fun guides and each other. Our guides were from all over the world, female and very passionate about their work.
I spotted our second bear which was splashing about in the shallow water, then crossed the gravel 3 times. We were a fair way back, so I am waiting for a zoomed in photo from Julie which will show him better.
The black dot on the left on the gravel......iphone zoom is just not that great!
Our 3rd bear was on an open meadow, decided to take a swim, then climb on to a small island then fall asleep under some trees...he didn’t come back out. The other group had 2 more sightings, which we were too late for.
Only a few metres away this time, can’t wait for Julies photo of this one, she was in that boat.
The scenery was beautiful, with snow capped mountains, mirror like still water courses, and plenty of changes to the scenery depending on tide and time of day.
These cute little faces kept bobbing up
Bald Eagle
Then came the SMOKE from the bush fires burning across British Columbia
We thought we had escaped the bush fires, but the smoke found us and visibility dropped to a mere few hundred metres.
It was eerie and grey, and we quite enjoyed the change in scenery colours.
We were supposed to have 3 nights and 4 days at the lodge which gave us 6 bear viewing opportunities, but the smoke made it impossible for the sea plane to come and get us as visibility was so poor. Our hosts tried to get us out by boat, which was near impossible to arrange as many other isolated people were in the same situation. We ended up being stranded for a further 2 nights, each morning repacking and being on standby, only to enjoy a further full day of hospitality and bear viewing each day. We all had time to spare before we were to get on planes and trains to continue our individual itineries. Boy did we get our money’s worth! We did feel sad though for the incoming group who couldn’t get in, they were stranded in Port Hardy, and were missing part of their 3 night tour.
Lucky for us, a business partner of the Lodge owned a Pilot Boat, and he managed to free up his hectic Piloting schedule and came and got us out, and brought some of the next group in. It was awesome. We got to sit up top, saw whales and sea lions and Derek got to feel nautious crossing the strait. We made it back to a sunny and clear Port Hardy, 3 hours later, although visibility had been only about 100m maximum.
We arrived back to a very smokie Vancouver (worse than when we left) after a 1 hour flight, at 7.30pm. Instead of 2 nights here we have only got one, which we are pleased about, and are hoping that the smoke does not follow us to our next Adventure....... tomorrow.
