A Honeymoon in Alaska

Most people envision a honeymoon in a perfect resort area by the beach, sipping champaign while laying in a hammock, with nothing at all to worry about. Sounds pretty nice, right? Well, there are alternatives to this sort of vacation if it doesn’t interest you, as Kari Bodnarchuk of The Boston Globe discovered. Here, Bodnarchuk writes about her recent honeymoon to the Alaskan wilderness.

It was a little unnerving being 15 feet from a black bear in the Alaskan wild, especially on our honeymoon.

My husband, Howard, and I stood on a little wooden platform with nothing more than a couple of rocks and a few blades of grass separating us from 355-pound Titan, as the locals called this resident black bear. Titan had long, razor-sharp claws and beady eyes that occasionally darted our way, but luckily he had something more palatable than us on the menu: fresh salmon.

“We release more than 100 million salmon into the bay each season,” said Dave Pederson, our naturalist guide, pointing to the hatchery next to us in Neets Bay, about a 10-minute flight northeast of Ketchikan. “That’s why you can get so close. They have all the food they need.”

Read more about Bodnarchuk’s honeymoon on Boston.com.