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.