Sitting on Top of the World

This is the greatest day yet. We love the Alaska Sealife Center and all the wonderful animals they rehabilitate and display. We decided to take a behind the scenes tour and learned so much about how the center works and the research they do. An interesting part of the tour was watching their remote cameras focus on Sea Lions that we had seen the day before on our boat trip. After the tour we signed up to do a Puffin Encounter and luckily we were the only two at that time slot. An intern took us behind the display area where the handlers work and we saw the breeding cages and nesting boxes. We also met an adorable rhinoceros auklet (Photo #1) and he got so excited that he jumped out of his cage and ran around on the floor to our delight. Then came the really fabulous part as we put on gloves, got a pail of fish and went into the display to feed the birds. We were surrounded by tufted (photo #5) and horned puffins, murres, auklets and red footed kittiwakes (photo #3.) My favorite one was the guillemot (Photo #4) with its red legs and sweet disposition. At the end we threw all the scraps into the water and the ducks swam up and greeted us. We had so much fun and later came back as visitors and to see our old friends. We also saw the seals and sea lions and learned lots about salmon. We had lunch in town and I ate the most delicious grilled halibut sandwich. Jeff loved the seafood chowder and his burger. Then we waddled back to the campground.