Thursday, July 23: Day 41

Today was hike day. Since it was low tide, we were able to take a trail that used a small piece of beach that's normally not available. It was part of a trail called the "Otterbahn trail". But before we got on the trail, we back tracked a bit on a small trail by our campground which took us to the edge of a cliff:

Here was the view. In the first picture you can kind of see some white dots on the ground next to the water. Those are scientists doing research on the algae exposed by low tide. In the second picture you can see the water mark where the water usually goes to. All of the darker brown stuff is covered up and the water comes right to the edge of the cliff:

Once we were in town we spent a little bit of time looking at the wood carvings that are all over the place. Every May they have a chain saw wood carvng contest and they keep them throughout the years. They're displayed in some very interesting places, one of which is the roof of this post office:

Some gorgeous flowers. I love flowers that are different like this!

Sometimes when large groups are together plans change and no one is quite sure why. We decided to go into the visitors center and see what there was to see. We ended up sitting in there for quite some time and all sorts of things were trying to be redecided when finally a smaller group of us decided we would pursue the hiking idea while the rest went back to camp. Boy am I glad we went further, because we were able to find all kinds of unique houses that were right on the edge of the Seldovia "slough", which led into a lagoon towards the end of our walk.

We also found a little trail that led to a small dam. In the little creek behind it, there were a bunch of "chum" (a kind of salmon that spawns at this time of year). It was insane because they would go upstream but it was so shallow you could see a large part of their bodies at times, splashing frantically to get up further. So cool!

This is the other side of the dam where it was deeper. It was a pretty place.

We also saw a very defined bear paw print:

And finally, skit night. The girls in my class did a very cute and funny skit about being the right kind of warrior which went right along with our theme: "What would a warrior do?"

Matthias and Brandon did a skit called "Lemme Have It", which was a big success. The tent to the left of him is the leader tent with a major tarp over it. Thankfully after the first night of being wet, one of the leaders bought a tarp for reinforcement which made for some warmer, dryer nights.

Wednesday, July 22: Day 40

What an amazing place! Our campsite was a couple minutes walk to what's called "Outside Beach", which has a huge tide difference--going from -6 to +23, with 2 high and 2 low tides a day. On low tide you can go beach combing to find things like star fish (Outside Beach has 12 species), Sand dollars, dunce-cap shells (they look like chinese hats), clams, mussels, jellyfish, crabs, sea urchins, barnacles, and anemone. Deaper in they have giant pacific octopus which are the largest Octopus in the world, growing up to nine feet. The people here are very resourceful with the sea life that they find and use the summer season to gather food for the winter, since most people do their food shopping in Homer and only make a few trips a year. (And for good reason, Matthias and I found a gallon-sized container of ice cream for $17!)

After certification in the morning, we went beach combing and exploring. Here are just a few pictures I took during the course of the afternoon:

This anemone was in-between two large rocks in a little pool of water left from the earlier high tide. It was so cool to see it up close!

This is as close as I ever want to be to a jellyfish. Shortly after this picture, one of the girls decided to disect it in a very brutal way. It was a sad way to see it go, although I'm pretty sure it was already dead.

This big rock was climbable, which many of us took the opportunity to do, starting with Matthias. The first two pictures below are different shots of the hill and the 3rd is Matthias before he made his ascent. Once at the top, you had great views of the ocean and surrounding cliffs.

This is Brandon Wilson, the other priesthood leader, making his way around a precarious rock. Later on in the week, he convinced some of the girls to try climbing all the way around the rock in their swim gear and every one of those girls got cut up and hurt in some way. Ironically, he made it out without a scratch. Hmmm....

This is Matthias and Haleigh when we were watching Brandon do his dangerous trick. Below that is Cara, probably thinking Brandon is pretty crazy.

One of my favorite parts of the beach was how steep the cliffs were that came right to the edge of the water. And on top of that, how close the trees came to the edge of the cliffs. Here is one that looks a bit suicidal.

After dinner we had some fun playing "signs" and this animal game Brandon taught us that was funny because everyone had a different animal sound/action that they passed on. It was a game of speed and it was funny to see everyone making the animal faces and getting into it.