At 9am we made a brief stop at Lagoon Cove Marina to refuel and an opportunity for a comfort break (for those not brave enough to use the on-board toilet). Back on-board we had some very yummy apple pastries.

It was raining heavily as we sailed through to Knight Inlet where a fellow guest spotted another black bear (bear number 41) it was making its way up the rocky bank away from the sea – we hardly slowed down, apparently we were now only looking for grizzly bears.

A few moments later we had our first grizzly bear of the day in view (bear number 42) we watched it until it went into the forest – there were several other boats around including the Tide Rip tour boat, Kermode, on their way to Glendale Cove. 

We were going to leave the area when our guides spotted another grizzly bear (bear number 43) on the coast, we were able to watch this one on our own as the other boats had moved on. Further along the Inlet the last of the day’s six bears was spotted, another grizzly (bear number 44). The rain poured down the entire time we were bear watching and the slightly choppy water made it very challenging for decent photos, but they did a good job of getting us close without disturbing the bears.

We had lunch on board the boat at midday, salad and ‘sandwich’, meanwhile we continued to watch what turned out to be the last bear sighting of the day.

At 1pm, we returned to the same fuel / rest stop as made on the way out, before going to briefly look at some petroglyphs. We then visited a colony of very noisy and nosey sea lions. They swam around our boat shouting at us. Guests were warned not to lean over the side of the boat as they have been known to grab ‘stuff’ hanging over the water!

It was last afternoon around 4pm when we went to the same location Alan visited on his Knight Inlet Lodge marine tour and saw many humpback whales, orcas, sea lions and hundreds of dolphins! It was pretty special watching them all feeding together. The dolphins leapt from the water in what seemed like a carefully choreographed ‘show’. Our crew did a god job of keeping us out of the choppiest water and we waited for the marine mammals to swim around us rather than chasing them.

At 4:30pm we continued our journey towards Vancouver Island and arrived back to Port McNeil just before 6pm.

We forgot to take down our mileage for day 10, only remembering when we were waiting to get onto the ferry so… our mileage from yesterday plus to the ferry was 95km 59 miles.

We left the hotel at 5am and queued to get on the ferry (there was already lots of vehicles queuing). As we checked-in we were told our ferry had an engine problem so it was likely we were going to arrive into Prince Rupert three hours late around 3am in the morning. We weren’t too concerned by this as we had booked a cabin. We were told which queue lane to wait in and pulled up leaving some space between us and the vehicle in front. We have often seen vehicles queue so closely to one another it can cause an issue when a person doesn’t return to their car when told and the queue can’t move around the stationary vehicle. Our gap worked to our advantage and we were pulled out of the queue to fill a gap on the ferry jumping the queue by quite a number of vehicles!

We left on time at 7:30am and after checking into our cabin (very small queue) we went for a buffet breakfast in the main restaurant (opened at 8am) – the food wasn’t great, but it was OK. I spent the majority of the day reviewing photos and videos, while Alan explored the ferry.

The weather was really nice and a BBQ lunch was served on the upper deck – I took a break from the bear photos for BBQ salmon & salad.

By mid-afternoon I was getting tired so I joined Alan for a walk around the deck and dinner in the café. We watched for wildlife along the narrow sections of waterway until the sunset. Around 8pm we tried to get some sleep and were woken at 11pm for arrival at Prince Rupert on time (the issue with the engine must have been resolved!)

Our invited queue jump ensured we were quickly off the ferry and at our hotel just before midnight. 

4km 2.5 Miles from ferry to hotel. 

We left the hotel 9:30am and refuelled before leaving Prince Rupert. It was a foggy cool morning, but our late start meant the low cloud was already starting to burn off as we moved away from the coast.

We stopped at a few watercourses to look for wildlife – stops included Diana Dam & Creek and Skeena River overlook.

We arrived at Terrace just before midday, checked into our hotel and went for lunch at Don Diego’s.

We spent the afternoon driving the Nisga’a Highway – “This ancient transportation corridor between two major river systems, the Skeena and Nass, was originally used by Indigenous People and later by trappers, miners, loggers, homesteaders and telegraph linemen. A public road finally connected the Kitsumkalum and the Nisga’a territories in 1979.”

We visited the Nisga’a Memorial Lava Bed Provincial Park exploring the pretty ponds and waterfalls along the auto tour.

We arrived back at the hotel at 6:30pm and had Pizza for dinner.

Mileage - 365km 227miles