I earned my Junior Ranger Certificate and Pin

I worked with Kathleen the National Forest Ranger. She helped me through the Junior Ranger program on the cruise. I had to complete 4 pages in order to graduate and I finished 6! I had to repeat an oath at the end of the cruise in front of the everyone on the cruise before I got my certificate and pin. (You'll notice that I got a little bit of my warm, chocolate chip cookie on the front... oh well...)

Kathleen signing my certificate.

Me holding a sea otter skin. Only native Alaskans can kill them now because they almost went extinct.

Kathleen was really nice and taught me a lot, like about sea otters. Sea otters are the smallest marine mammal adn they have the most dense fur - about 1 million hairs per square inch. They are really soft! They can grow to about 5' and weigh about 100 lbs. They are also the largest in the weazel family. Oh, and a group of otters is called a 'raft' of otters, because they pretty much live on their backs except for when they are diving for food.


I also learned about the Ghost Forests around the edges of the water. In 1964 there was a huge, 9.2 earthquake in Alaska. It submerged a bunch of land, including forest that surrounded the water so it was exposed to a bunch of salt water. The salt water killed and preserved the trees adn they're all still there, but they are whitish grey with no leaves or needles - that's why they're called ghost forests.
(There are trees that look like these up high in the mountains, but they were killed by the Spruce Bark Beetle, not salt water.)

I also learned about icebergs. Only 15% of icebergs actually show above water, the other 85% is below the water. I could hear the boat scraping the ice when we went over them and I also saw small chunks fall off the glaciers into the water.