Hi Kathy,
I was on the 1st team. It was amazing! We started officially when we met at the airport. Unfortunately orr fortunately, depending on who and when you asked, the briefing was right, and the plane did not fly, due to weather. we got as far as St Paul, the larger of the islands, the next day.We were there for almost 3 days before PenAir could pick us up and fly us the rest of the way. The Islands are very beautiful in a very wild and remote way. There is not a tree on the island, not to mention no resteraunts! The seals were just starting to have their pups and we saw one birth and were assigned a mother and pup interactions for 2 hours at a time. LOVED IT!!
Hi Kathy,
I was on team number 5 and was there during the last part of August. It was a great expedition and St George Island is a truly amazing place. As they said, it is a very remote place, but we stayed at a great house and had a great dinner cooked for us every night. The island has all of the basic necessities including a grocery store, post office and medical clinic; it was kind of nice to be away from the rat race for the time that I was there. We had internet and cable so we were always able to stay connected if we wanted to.
It was so peaceful to sit up in the blind with binoculars and watch the fur seals in action. The pups were very active during the time that we were there and they spend a lot of time playing with the other pups. There were also lots of birds and I enjoyed watching them too when we were not busy with our fur seal observations. There were some great hiking trails - we had to go on one of the shorter ones to get to the blind every day. We also hiked some of the other trails which had some amazing views. With sunset not until about 11:30 P.M.we were able to hike a lot in the evening.
We were lucky enough to get 2 extra days at the end of our trip when the fog came in on the day that we were supposed to leave and the plane could not land. Needless to say, I was not at all upset when I found out that we would have to stay the extra time. I would really like to go back - it is a wonderful place to go!
