Today was my last full day in Alaska and it was a rather boring day. We had to get ready to head back to New York tomorrow, so we spent the day cleaning our cabins and packing. The nice thing about today was we all got to sleep in since we did not have anything to wake up early for. I slept until 8 am which to me was sleeping in because every other day I have been up between 5 and 6 am. When we get back to New York we have to give presentations on a topic we chose about Alaska. I am doing my presentation on moose. I worked on putting together my presentation today so I will have less work to do when I get back to New York. As a way to celebrate our time in Alaska and as an ending to our trip, we are going out to a fancy steak and seafood restaurant in Homer tonight. This will probably be the last post I make. The next time I go online I will most likely be back in New York. Tomorrow we have to get up early and depart our cabins. We have about a 4 hour drive to the airport in Anchorage. Our plane does not leave until 5pm but on our way to the airport we are stopping at one more big attraction in Alaska. We are going to a wildlife conservation center where there will  be all sorts of different animals that live in Alaska. That will be a great closure to my adventures in Alaska. I have had a great time here but I am ready to come home. 

Goodbye Alaska! 

Today was the last big adventure of our Alaska trip. We went on an 8 hour hike. The hike had all different parts to it. At times we were walking along a beach, other times we were hiking up a steep hill through the woods, or maneuvering our way through huge bolder rocks. It was quite the adventure. We hiked all the way up to the peak of the mountain and had lunch then we made our way back down. This morning we took about a half hour boat ride from Homer to the mountain we hiked. While on our hike we came across a dog and he followed us for the remainder of our hike. Then he headed back home as we boarded the boat to head back to Homer. The dog belonged to a family that had a cabin up on the mountain. The cool thing about our hike was that the tide was really high when we first arrived and really low by the time we left. We saw a rock that looked like a sea otter and it is known as Otter Rock. When we got to the mountain it was almost completely covered in water, by the time we left, the rock was hardly in water at all so we were able to climb up Otter Rock and explore around a little. It was a great day overall and a nice way to end our adventures in Alaska. Tomorrow we will be spending the day packing and cleaning our cabin and then we fly back to New York on Monday.

This is Otter Rock

Some people from my group exploring the tide pools on Otter Rock

Lunch time...although you can't tell in the picture we are on top of a very high cliff

After the hike we were all so tired. As a joke, when we were told to smile for the camera we all pretended to be sleeping on the beach

Today was such an exciting day! I got to go dog sledding (the summer version of it) and whale watching all in the same day. Our day began bright in early at 5am and we drove three hours to Seward in order to go dog sledding and whale watching. The place we went dog sledding at was the home of the Seaveys. They are a family that has been dog sledding for years and participating in the Iditarod in Alaska. One man from the family, Mitch Seavey won the Iditarod in 2004 and one of his sons just won this year's Iditarod. Some of the dogs that pulled us today in dog sledding were the dogs that helped win the Iditarod. Since there is no longer much snow on the ground in Seward, we did not actually go dog sledding. Instead, the dogs pulled us through a trail in the woods on a wheeled cart. It was such a cool experience. The place also had puppies for us to hold and play with. They could be possible future winners of the Iditarod. There were lots of dogs at the place, and one dog was special because he was in the movie "Snow Dogs." After our time with the dogs, we went on a four hour whale watching cruise. We ended up seeing five whales. I'm not sure what type they were. We think they were Humpback whales. We also saw lots of sea lions,seals, and a mountain goat while on the whale watch. After our two adventures were over, we drove three hours back to our cabin and relaxed for the night because we were all tired from a very long day!

This is the dog from the movie Snow Dogs

This is what the carts looked like that the dogs pulled us in

The dogs were so friendly!

This is one of the puppies I got to hold :)

This is what it looked like as the dogs pulled us on the cart through the woods

Although it isn't much this is one of the whales I saw on the whale watching boat

These are some of the sea lions we saw from the whale watching boat

Today's adventures made me truly feel like I was in Alaska. I got to go snowshoeing. Before doing that though we went exploring around a salt marsh in search of birds. The birds are currently all migrating back to Alaska now after leaving for the winter so we were able to see lots of them along the shoreline and in the salt marsh. Our tour guide said that salt marshes are like McDonald's to birds...aka fast food on the go because the birds stop there to get food and then continue migrating elsewhere.The only thing I did not like about walking around in the salt marsh was the fact that it was muddy. I got muddy enough yesterday and did not want to be in more mud today. After we were done looking for birds we walked over to a lake called Beluga Lake and we took samples of the creatures living in the water. We found some snails, egg sacks, and lots of larvae. Our day ended by going snowshoeing. We went on a 3 mile hike using snowshoes through the woods. Normally, the hike would have been just a normal hike wearing hiking boots, but there was still over 2 feet of snow on the trail so our hiking guide provided us all with snowshoes. I had never been snowshoeing before and had lots of fun trying it. Tomorrow will be another great Alaskan adventure, because we are going dog sledding and whale watching. I am really excited. 

Here I am bird watching in the salt marsh

These are people from my group searching for critters in the lake

Ready to snowshoe :)

Today was a dirty adventure! We went clam digging in the low tide and got VERY muddy. At one point I got stuck in the mud and it was up to my knees. People had to come and dig me out because I literally could not move. I was so scared being stuck! We were clam digging as a volunteer project for the Alaska Fish and Game Department. They wanted to collect Razor Clams and analyze their shells to see how old the clams are. In return for our volunteer services, we got to keep all of the clams from the shells. In all we dug about 170 clams and we were digging for about 5 hours. After we were done digging the clams, we had to clean the mud off of them and then remove the clam from the shell. That was my job. Someone else stuck the clams in hot water until they opened up their shells, and then I took the clam and removed it from the shell. Can you guess what we ate for dinner tonight? I don't usually like clams, but after all the hard work we did today to get the clams I decided to try a few and they tasted good. 

Ready to go clam digging. We were given water waders, boots, a bucket, and a clam shovel

This is a good example of how muddy we got

This is me and my clam digging partner. We got really dirty.

This is after we were all done digging. I had scratched my nose because it was itchy and ended up with mud all over my face because I forgot my hands were so dirty.

Here I am cleaning the clams

After I cleaned the clams, I opened up the shells and removed the clams.

Today was a busy day filled with lots of different things but it was kind of boring. We mostly went on tours all day of buildings. First we went to a Russian Orthodox Church in Ninilchik, Alaska. It is claimed to be one of the most photographed churches. Next we went to a Historical museum in the town of Kasilof, Alaska which had lots of old buildings that people used to live in such as cabins and farm houses. The buildings were so small. In one cabin that I went in, it was so little that I could touch the ceiling with my hands while my feet were touching the ground. After that we went to a similar place but in a different town called Soldotna. At that place there  was an old school. The classroom was much different to the current classrooms. Our last stop of the day was to a wildlife visitor's center in Kenai, Alaska. After that some people chose to go to a movie theater and see the Avengers. I was not interested in going to see that movie, so I headed back to the cabins with a few other people. While the others were at the movies, we went out to dinner in Homer and all had fresh Alaskan Fish and Chips. 

This is a picture of the Russian Orthodox Church

This is a picture of one of the cabin buildings we saw. 

This is what the old classrooms used to look like. This particular room used to have students from grades first through seventh in it. Would you like to go to school in this classroom?

The weather was much nicer today than it was yesterday and today was much more adventurous than the past two days were. We began our morning by going to tide pools. The tide was so far out so we had lots of space to explore along the beach. There were so many different creatures to look at inside the tide pools. We saw star fish, sea anemones, sea cucumbers, crabs, clams squirting water  from their shells, shrimp, a baby flounder fish, and even a baby octopus. It was really cool. Walking through and around the tide pools was quite the adventure and a very slippery one because of all the seaweed on the rocks. I ended up slipping and falling into a tide pool. It hurt a little but I was mostly just laughing about it. I just got very muddy and wet.I was not the only one to fall. We explored the tide pools for about two hours and then we had to leave because the tide was starting to come back into shore. In the afternoon we attended a presentation on the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill which was a bad oil spill that happened in Alaska in 1989. They are still finding traces of the oil on beaches from the spill. We ended the afternoon by going for another beach walk and then headed back to our cabin to make dinner. 

This is the tide pool area we went to

This is the baby octopus that we found in a tide pool

I am holding one of the star fish we found in a tide pool and this photo was taken right before I fell (hence my expression because I am about to go down to the ground)

This is another star fish that we found and it is a different type than the one in the picture above