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After breakfast at the Tidepool Cafe the morning fog was still hanging around, so we boarded Chuck's boat and headed around a small point looking for Otters. We cruised around a point of land and spotted several floating on their backs on the surface. As we got closer we noticed that two of them were eating something, and then discovered it was an octopus! One of them had the main part of the octopus, the other had a tentacle. They were munching away, never letting us get too close. It was fun to follow them around and watch them gobble up their fresh tako sushi! As we headed back to the dock the fog was breaking up, so we gathered our gear and headed for the plane.
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 Eating an Octopus |
 Mmmm, sushi! |
We took off and flew a short distance to the town of Homer, where we had lunch. Afterwards we headed to the East along the southern coast, towards Prince William Sound. We flew over lush green mountains, the exit delta of the Copper River and past a couple of glaciers that dumped out into the ocean. Then we flew over the peaks of Montague Island and set down on the beach on the other side. We were the only people on the island!
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Montague Island is uniquely situated for driftwood to wash ashore from the Japanese Current. Chuck said they've found all kinds of things on the beach, including driftwood from as far away as Africa. The beach was covered with it for miles in either direction, and covered at least a hundred feet of the beach in places. We walked around for a while looking through the debris. Rick managed to find a glass float, which he was very excited about. They hadn't been made for almost 40 years, but many are still floating around the world's oceans.
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We took off and kept going East, making a short stop on Hitchenberg island. One of the things we noticed was that a large percentage of the trees in many sections were dead or dying. Chuck told us this was due to the Spruce Bark Beetle, which attacks and kills mature spruce trees. We would see evidence of this in almost every forest we saw.
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We flew over the Tsiu to look for the beginnings of the salmon runs, then past the sound to the Bagley Ice Fields, where we turned North. We flew over the ice fields and it was really impressive. At one point we could see for over 50 miles on both sides of the plane, and it was ice as far as we could see. We flew past the Twa Harpies (Hawkins Glacier) and continued North to the Wrangell Mountains. There we landed at the Ultima Thule Lodge, a great lodge made up of a small number of very comfortable cabins along the edge of the Chitna River. The lodge had recently been moved (cabin by cabin) up the bank of the river, as the river had recently shifted from the other side of the valley and was encroaching on the old lodge location.
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We met two other couples while we were there, who surprisingly were both also from San Francisco! Small World! After a great dinner we headed down to our cabin, watched a movie for a bit, and then fell asleep. (Though it was a bit tough as there was a skylight and it was light out until after midnight!)
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 Ice as far as we could see |
 The Rings of Saturn |
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