After breakfast, we checked out of the Westmark and took a shuttle to the airport to pick up our rental car. We mailed a big chunk of souvenirs at the Anchorage airport post office, which is always open! Then we drove the car to our motel near the airport.

One of the areas had a wolf pack of about 7-8 wolves, and the alpha wolf, a big black wolf, ran back and forth in the huge enclosure following Natan as Natan ran back and forth outside the enclosure. Whenever Natan changed directions, the wolf changed directions. It was really wonderful to watch them. I think the wolf saw Natan as a friend to play with, but of course he could also be thinking of Natan as lunch... We stayed watching Natan and the wolf run for a long time. When we left, the wolf looked very sad.

We played dominoes, and then Arthur and I left Natan in the motel room watching TV while we went to an internet, checked email, and drove around a lake filled with seaplanes.

After checking in, we drove back down to milepost 13 on the Hope road, which we were told was a good viewpoint for the incoming tide. It was a rocky promontory, with a cove nearby covered with a rocky beach and deep, deep, mud flats, where exiting water had carved gorges in the mud.

Natan wanted to go explore the mud and rocks, but we were worried that if a 6-foot wave came in it might catch him out in the open, but he said that we could keep watch for the wave way down the arm, and warn him, and he could run quickly up to the top. So, we timed him on a bunch of test runs, and surely enough, he made the run in about 13 seconds. So, we kept watch for the wave, and kept imagining we saw it, when what we were seeing was shadows on the water. Before long, Natan was pretty covered in glacial powder mud. Ugh!

Arthur spotted the first wave front, which was hitting the opposite side of the arm way up near the beginning. By the time it got near us it had pretty much petered out. Then Arthur spotted a series of waves. When they got to us there was a growling sound, and the waves -- there were a bunch of them, one right after the other -- formed a gorgeous arc across the arm, with the center part of the waves moving faster than the sides. My guess is that the waves were about 2-4 feet at their max, and they started filling up our cove slowly. We decided to leave when the water got up about one foot, and come back around 9:30pm when it should be pretty full.

We first went back to the Lodge and had Natan wash off his shoes and socks and body as well as he could in the pond. Glacial mud is very fine, and clings like cement, so it wasn't a very fun job.

We went for a drive through the tiny (161 people) town of Hope, and to dinner at Tito's (which had great home-made cherry pies).

A local there told us someone parked their truck on the rocks, and left it to go on a hike. The local person watched the truck drown inch by inch until the water was 2-3 feet high around (and into) the truck. What a mess!