With a fresh supply of "fun tickets" in my bank account, I am armed and ready for more international adventure. A nice long vacation is what I need at this point and that's what I'm going to do. In order to call it vacation, however, I've learned that one must actually do work first.

I just spent the last four months working at The Royal Coachman Lodge near Bristol Bay Alaska north of Dillingham . This was my second season working there and this year brought a few new challenges to the table. My greatest responsibility was probably turning on the generator at 5:45am each morning so we can have electricity. Not a big deal really until you analyze the probabilities of getting attacked by a grizzly bear in the dark. Unlike last year, the pink salmon came up the river by the thousands to spawn, die, and litter the river bank with their carcasses. To the grizzly bear packing on the pounds for a long winter, this event is a feeding frenzy and they routinely came close to our camp. Once late August rolled around, the fish were dying quickly, the bears were more common, and it was dark in the morning when I got up for work.
After getting out of bed and dressed, my morning routine went something like this. Headlamp, check. Spotlight, check. Industrial strength pepper spray for bears, Check. I decided to carry bear spray over the 12 gage shotgun because at 5:45 in the morning I thought I was more likely to shoot myself in the foot than hit anything chasing me in the darkness . So armed with all that stuff, I would poke my head out the door of my cabin and look for bears. Seeing nothing, I would make my way to the top of the stairs overlooking the camp and use the spotlight to light up our trash pile and food pantries. Seeing nothing, I would advance into camp and stop at each building, checking around each corner and looking for two big bright eyes reflecting back at me....until I eventually made it to the generator housing and started the diesel motor. From there, it was back through camp and down to the river to hit the water pump switch, wondering all the while where I would hide if I were a bear and what angle of attack would be best to get the human. 

Fortunately, the bears were either sleeping at this ridiculous hour or not interested in humans as food. But since I didn't view this daily commute as a wildlife viewing excursion, I am pleased to say that I saw no bears.

So where to next? I decided to head back to South America and revisit some of my favorite places and see what's changed. Hopefully, I will have new photos and things to put on this travel blog but I already know I am going back to places I've already been. Hopefully I can come up with new things to do and photograph for this travelblog. Either way, I know I'm going to have a good time. After four months of work, I need a good seven month vacation!