July 16, 2009

July 16, 2009

Before leaving Homer, AK, we stop at the Alaska Islands and Ocean Visitor Center. The center covers the work of the US Fish and Wildlife Service managing the Alaska Maritime Wildlife Refuge. The refuge mostly consists of the rocky Aleutian Islands that are home to countless nesting sea birds. The center has some interesting exhibits and a nice movie. Apparently the Service spends a lot of money counting and studying the birds. To my distaste and typical of environmentalists, they have a list of which species they value and are intent on eradicating other species so that the preferred ones proliferate. The biologists don’t like the fact that foxes and rats are eating some of the bird eggs. Their latest effort is the release of 100,000 pounds of rat poison on a small island. It seems we never learn. In our visits to the many National Parks, we have discovered that we have a history of these eradication efforts. Most with disastrous effects. When will we learn to leave Mother Nature alone.

The Visitor Center also hosted a talk by a Lake Clark National Park ranger. Despite it being given by a seemingly very young college student, she was very knowledgeable and the talk quite interesting. The presentation was on the line of 40+ active volcanoes that stretch all along the Aleutian chain to Lake Clark NP. It was pretty ominous how frequent and how close the eruptions are to our location. Maybe Aimee was right about not wanting to camp on Homer’s spit. If one of the volcanoes had a mudslide, the ensuing tsunami would have washed us off the sandbar.

Rethinking our visit to Homer, we leave town immediately and retrace our route north stopping at a campground on the Kasilof River.