- Welcome/Overview
- Content Notes
- Lesson and Activities
- Lesson 1-Living Systems-Where do we fit?
- Lesson 2- Explore Your "Wild" World!>
- Lesson 3- Building Food Chains and Food Webs>
- Lesson 4- Owls- A Mighty Predator
- Lesson 5- About Ecosystems>
- Lesson 6- We Are Explorers! (day1 of 2 lessons)>
- Lesson 7- We Are Explorers (day 2 of 2 lessons)
- Lesson 8-A Closer Look at Communities
- Lesson 9- What's in the Water?
- Lesson 10- Our Environment/Our World>
- Websites for Kids
- Books Used Throughout Lessons 1-10
- Assessment Page
My Trip to Alaska
I took a trip back in the mid 90's to Alaska with my family. We flew into Kodiac where we got to know a little bit about Alaska and the lives of people who live there. We fished for salmon, did some deep sea fishing, and took some great hikes, but none compared to what we did for 5 days exploring Katmai National Park. We traveled across the Shelikof Strait aboard a retired National Geographic Research Tugboat to the Katmai Peninsula to observe Brown Bears in their natural habitat.
We had a naturalist on board who showed us the ropes and guided us through our hikes around the park. We looked under rocks and dead tree limbs, studied animal droppings, and witnesses wildlife all around us. We slept on the tugboat out of harms way and tendered into various spots on and around the Katmai Peninsula during the day to explore. We visited a variety habitats and saw a wide range of sea and land birds and animals. We even passed by a few glaciers as we explored the peninsula
One of the most interesting things we saw was a mama bear and a juvenile bear lumbering along as we moved along a coastal trail. We surprised her and she really surprised us. We had to stop and gather all together to make ourselves look really big and ferocious. Bears do not have great eyesight so we tried to look like some big scary thing that she doesn't eat to keep the Mama bear away.
The juvenile was undeterred by our antics and continued to move closer until Mama bear stood up tall on her hind legs and let out a GROWL! The Juvenile looked at us one more time and then ran back towards Mama bear. It was very frightening. All in all we had a great trip and an experience of a lifetime.
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