July 20th

We awoke to fogy mystical world. The mountains that previously surrounded us were now hidden. We ate breakfast, packed up our belongings and made our way down the misty mountain top. Our vision was limited with the fog rolling through and every now and then a mountain side would reveal itself to us. At times we could see the town below with the giant cruse ship parked in the sound but moments later it disappeared altogether.


-Inside the shelter. Names of the past visitors are etched and written on it's walls.


-Good morning handsome.


-The trail ahead.






-Facing a collapsed staircase.

When arriving back to the trail head of Gaven, I showed Erik the old graveyard that exists there. This graveyard is very old and a good majority of the tombstones are unreadable from the years of facing the natural elements. If you didn't know that these grounds were a graveyard you might mistaken it for an open field area. But if you moved aside the layers of moss beneath your feet you would discover your were standing on a grave marker. Some of the people berried here had died in the 1800's. I really think this spot is amazing. I just so happened to stumble across it one day and am in awe of the history that lays there.

It felt so good to shower when arriving back to Sheldon Jackson after our long hike. I had been describing to Erik how amazing Roma's Climax Pizza was previously and we both decided that sounded like the perfect solution to ease our building hunger. Erik really enjoyed the Italian sausage white sauced pizza that was The Climax. With bellies full we biked to Stargaven to try to catch a gimps of the bear sow and cubs.

As luck would have it no bears were to be found. So we decided to walk along the beach at Mosquito Cove and were very fortunate to see two sea lions playing in the Pacific. As one sea lion floated merrily on its back a larger lion decided it was great fun to hassle its playmate by splashing and jumping on the other. Fortunately we remembered to bring along my binoculars so we had a wonderful close up view of this scene.


-Thought this was funny. That's a pile or bear scatt behind the sign.


-The playful sea lions.

It couldn't hurt to check for the bears one last time. Sure enough, after 5 minutes or so mom and cubs appeared out of the forest. They didn't stick around long perhaps another 5 minutes but I was very happy Erik had the opportunity to view some of Sitka's wild bears.



On our way back home from biking I was just craving some Junior Mints. We decided to stop at Lakeside Grocery for a sugar and alcohol run. After a very fiscal full day, we settled down to watch Shawshank Redemption while treating ourselves to a platter of treats and a bottle of cheep wine.