Alaska Trip - Day 4

Tuesday, August 18, 2008

There's a lot to write about on this day. We did so much - it was an amazing day.

After another great breakfast, we drove a little ways to the north of Kodiak to White Sands Beach. This is a beautiful beach at the head of a small bay with several hiking trails that originate from here and head off into the surrounding forests.

Closeup of White Sands Beach

The coolest thing about this beach though is the sand - it is one of the few beaches on the island (at least that I know of) that is sandy, and, the sand is a lixture of black volcanic and white quarts sand. That, combined with the very low relief, means the water creates a lot of beautiful patterns in the sand ripples when the tide comes in and then goes back out. I was just going to post a couple of the better pictures, but the patterns are so varied and amazing, it would be beter to make a slide show. Most of these are of the sand, but some are of the surrounding scenery, which is amazing.

We decided to walk around the right bank of the beach at the base of some low cliffs, which meant walking through the surf a bit, so we went back to the car to put on our hip waders. By the time we got back to the beach just a few minutes later, we could already see that much of the beach we were just walking on was now under water. As I said, this beach is very flat, so in some places you can litterally watch the tide come in or out. Anyway, we walked to the right side of the bay head and easily crossed the river that empties into the bay. There were lots of salmon in there.

I always like walking along rocky beaches because there is so much life there. Chitons, limpets, seaweed, starfish, anemones . . . and that's just in the water. Then you have all of the beautiful, incredibly green plants growing in and on the very black cliffs and rocks.

We didn't walk too far or too long because the tide was coming up fast and we didn't want to get trapped out there. So we headed back, except we made the mistake of trying to cross the river in the same spot that we crossed it the 1st time. We quickly realized this mistake. While it was no problem the 1st time, the tide had come up too much. I was the only one who got across without getting wet, Ed and Sarah got slightly wet, but Jeanette got a good amount of water in her waders. It was pretty funny. We're rookies, I guess.

Sarah and Jeanette trying to get back across the river without getting wet.

Since most of us were wet, we went back to town instead of hiking on some of the trails here as I had planned. On our way back to town we stopped at a nice bluff on the road overlooking the ocean and the bay forming White Sands Beach.
We got back, dried off, had lunch, and then since we didn't have a ton of time before we needed to meet Josh at the plane, we went downtown to check out the tourist shops.
It wasn't long before we had to meet Josh at the plane. He said there was a good chance we'd get to go on a bear view this afternoon, but when we got there the trip was in doubt because the paying customers were no where to be found, and since we were just freeloaders getting to go because of the generosity of Josh's boss, the trip would have to be canceled if they didn't show up. Fortunately they did, and it was only a little while before we were on our way. The paying customers were a nice couple from Oregon, I believe.

Ok, the morning was great, but the afternon was AMAZING! Since the afternoon was in a national parkthough, by convention, I'll have to save that for the next post. Stay tuned!