These boots are made for walking...

7/19/07
Ruth's phone woke me at about 6:15. It was Kira telling us that they
were cleaning the house. ;)
We went to Duncan's Café and had 2 groovies and 2 bagels (a groovy is
yougurt, granola and fruit). We then went walking to see the town.
We walked to the edge of the Homer Spit but nothing was open yet so we
walked back toward the hostel. We got back near it and decided to go
to the Pratt Museum in town. It was really neat. They had lots of
interesting exhibits about life here and then we saw a movie about a
native Alutiq seal hunter and how they hunted.
We walked to another level with a seabird cam that was showing the
nesting sites of Glaucous Gulls. We then went further downstairs to
an exhibit on the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Ruth and I stood transfixed
by reading the account of the spill and the aftermath of it. Of
course, there may be some bias but they sure make Exxon look bad in
the descriptions about what occurred. They had a map with a plastic
disc that was the size of the oil spill and we could sit it on Cape
Cod and the spill stretched further than Buffalo, NY. They described
the effects upon fisheries, wildlife, and individuals. Now, 28 years
later, they still find clumps of oil in the sound and over 1/3 of the
species have shown NO recovery from the spill.
Our next stop was a video cam from the McNeil River where they show
grizzlies feeding on salmon. If you want to see the cam, go to
www.prattmuseum.org and click on the bear cam. Eventually, you'll
come to a live cam of the bears in the waterfall. It was fun watching
them fish.
After this, Ruth and I decided to walk out to the Homer Spit. It took
us an hour and a half to walk there but it was fun to just walk and
talk on the way there.
Ruth spotted a bald eagle that was just flying above the spit hunting
for food. We ended up seeing it 4 times during the walk.
By the time we returned from the spit, we'd walked about 15 miles
today. I'm exhausted from it.
We also went shopping at Safeway to get a lunch for tomorrow. We need
something to go on the plane with us to Katmai so we got some apples,
bananas, yougurt and a sandwich.
The sky has now cleared significantly and we're sitting at a local
restaurant prior to heading back to the hostel. I imagine we'll sleep
well tonight and tomorrow, we're looking forward to a fantastic
journey to Katmai.

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Todd Ryan; Hudson, MA
Westborough HS Science Teacher
MSF RiderCoach