Alaska is a Big Place, and while our staff at Bear Paw definitely doesn’t know it all, this Grandfather, Son, Grandson family business offers a lot of Alaska knowledge that can help make your Alaska trip the best it can be. And, you will get the viewpoints of three generations.

Bear Paw’s staff brings you advice based on a wide range of direct experiences, including Alaska commercial crabbing and commercial fishing, guiding for halibut & salmon fishing, trapping, panning and sluicing for gold and log home building.

We have boated on Prince William Sound; the Interior rivers including the Tanana, Yukon and Koyukuk; shot moose along the Nowitna and Honhosa Rivers and the Nikolai Slough. We have crossed Skilak Lake, and climbed the Kenai Mountains for bear.  We hiked to wilderness graves of early Russian settlers in the Sound.

We have flown into the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains by super cub and hunted Dahl sheep off the high peaks. Gone by float plane beyond Iliamna Volcano to the windy tundra for Caribou. Fished for halibut and salmon in the Inlet; fished yellow eye, salmon, halibut and ling cod in the Sound; pike and sheefish in the Nowitna River; dolly varden, kings, silver, reds and trout in the Anchor and other local rivers and lakes.

At times, in the Alaska Interior, we have watched thousands of ducks and geese that blackened the day sky, seen almost as many beaver, river otters, bears, moose and wolves, ravens, eagles, and falcons. We have heard the lonely call of the wolf; and saw the breathtaking Arora Borealis from Anchor Point on a cold winter night when it filled the sky with dancing lights from horizon to horizon. 

We sat in a sled pulled by dogs that seem to live only to run, with the sled flipping over more than once in the deep snow on the high-speed downhill runs.

We have built cabinets in Anchorage and at the top of the world at Prudhoe Bay.

We have driven the Haul Road (road to Prudhoe Bay) and crossed the E. L. Patton Bridge over the Yukon River. There we launched our boat into the river, traveling past the Yukon River villages of Rampart, Tanana, Ruby, Koyukuk and Galena and then up the Koyukuk River as far as the Honhosa River.  You might have seen some of these villages on TV Alaska shows.

We have seen the big coastal brown bears at Katmai and Brooks Falls; slept at Brooks Camp; and there we saw active digs of Native American structures and hiked down to the valley of 10,000 smokes.  We saw the orcas, humpbacks, sea lions, seals and sea otters in Kachemak Bay, and in Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound.  In the Sound we saw and heard calving glaciers.

We hiked the trails at Kachemak Bay State Park and other local trails, and on the Homer Spit we snagged salmon in the Nick Dudiak Fishing Lagoon and had a beer at the Salty Dawg Saloon. 

In the old days, we were shot at by natives and were the target of a Malakoff cocktail thrown through our truck window (which fortunately did not explode). 

We have lived a subsistence style, at least to some extent, growing vegetables, fishing and hunting. 

We have tent camped, sleeping on the ground under the Alaska Pipeline, along the Yukon River, at Engineer Lake on the Kenai, in the mountains of the Alaska Range and in the wilderness, on the gold rush trial at Manly Hot Springs Roadhouse, and by many rivers - too many to count. We have also slept in public wilderness cabins.

We have studied the literature too about the early native Americans, some crossing on a land bridge from Asia.  We read the books about the discovery of Alaska by Vitus Bering on his second Kamchatka mission. On that trip, George Stellar stepped off a long boat launched from the ship and laid down on Kayak Island the first footprints of a white man on Alaska soil.

We also studied the ship logs of captain James Cook when he sailed on his third and final voyage. On that adventure cook spent the night of May 27 1778, on anchor just off the beach at our location at anchor point. The next morning, he lost one of the ship's anchors which is still on the bottom. This led him to name a nearby rounded point on the shoreline Anchor Point.

We have been chasing the Alaska experience since about 1984. The older members of the staff are from Pennsylvania and the youngest is Alaska-born, a graduate of Homer high. 

We rely on our experience to plan and implement a 2-3 week college travel class where students learn about the natural wonders of Alaska.  Many of the class activities are things that our lodging customers also enjoy and there is positive feedback between course activities and our recommended adventures.

Bear Paw Adventure has been providing lodging and adventure services at Anchor Point since about 1993. We have a short list of trusted adventure services providers (charter operators) that we recommend for our lodging guests and that we include in our lodging/adventure packages. These are operators who, over the years, have received excellent client reviews.

Recently we certified as an Alaska travel expert a certification that is obtained by book study. I will have to admit that I learned some things from the course. We did notice that we have experienced a lot of the Alaska locations and attractions mentioned in the study material - but not nearly all of them 

Alaska is a Big Place.  We will be happy to help you enjoy it. Come stay with Bear Paw Adventure at Anchor Point.