We decided to wake up a little later than usual after a long night of sea-bound traveling. It was definitely worth the rocking of the boat in the night to see those beautiful, green mountains of Kodiak again. It was also extraordinarily kind of Trevor and Andy to sail through the night for us and we thanked them both for their generosity. While they got some well-deserved sleep, we gathered in the common area and ate a quiet breakfast while watching Shawkshank Redemption.
At around 12, we decided to head to the Chowder House to quickly stifle our cravings for fish and chips and milkshakes. Jon seemed particularly happy to be there, laughing and joking to everyone in his vicinity. Though it was raining (what a surprise), it was refreshing to be back on human inhabited land; Everyone’s mood seemed lifted by our return to solid concrete streets, or perhaps that was simply the effect of our tasty, Alaskan seafood.
After lunch, we re-boarded the Island C and spent a good bit of the afternoon pulling all of the marine debris we’d collected out of the hold and into a staging area on at the town dock. Haley rallied our spirits by giving the clean up her all, despite our rainy conditions. Andy later told us he thinks we collected about 5,000 lbs, though we won’t be sure until we weight what we collected properly.
Once we finished with that, we did some quick housecleaning and headed into town for showers, which Ethan later told us was his favorite part of the day. After we were all dry and clean, we decided to spend some leisure time eating nachos and playing pool at a Mexican restaurant in town. Justin and Michael seemed to particularly enjoy playing, and as usual Tom’s infectious mood made it easy for everyone to relax and have fun.
We carried on having fun all the way to Henry’s, a local steak & seafood house. There we ate and conversed light heartedly and simply enjoyed each others company. Melanie and Shane decided to cap off dinner by thanking the students for being real troupers throughout the trip and “not whining”, a sentiment which Andy, Bill, and our trail leaders agreed. Melanie and Shane then thanked Andy for the opportunity to be here and do such rewarding work for the environment. Finally, they thanked Tom, Mike, and Ally for being such wonderful trail leaders and positive thinkers, topping off their sentiments by presenting them with an Alaskan cookbook, which we all signed.
Finally, after a lovely night together in town, Andy and Bill went home and we went back to the Island C. Tom, Mike, and Ally left soon after dropping us off with promises to cook breakfast for us the next morning and see us off to the airport. Shane and Melanie went to bed, reminding us that we should do some packing and preparation for the next day. Then, once we were all set, we, the seven interns, stayed up watching movie scenes, rejoicing in our accomplishments, and reminiscing on our journey together. Jasmine was right; we will look back on this trip years from now and think how amazing this experience was.
We start our trip back to New York tomorrow, and we can’t wait to see the hopefully smiling faces of our loved ones back home (though we hope they excuse us for our probable jet-lagged stupor). See you then.
-Emily Diaz
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