Urban Unangax^ Culture Camp

Day 9, Saturday
Culture camp is over. All that's left is the closing ceremonies and celebrations.

 One last session with the lion.

 And another one.

 It's another sunny day.

 They finished slapping new siding on the back of the motel. Soon the whole place will look like this.

 We have some time so we head downtown to the sun city cafe for breakfast.  Turns out there's a one hour wait.  We head back and go to the Village Inn cafe where you can get coffee within 3 minutes and breakfast within 15.

 Before we leave downtown we stop by to admire the statue of Captain Cook whom the Cook Inlet is named after.

 Then we load up some kayaks and head off to the Alaska Native Heritage Center.  On the way, we pass the Parkwood Inn where we stayed last year. The place was pretty shabby and we referred to it as the Crackwood Inn.

 At the heritage center we are having a potluck lunch in the Athabaskan ceremonial hall.

 But first the blessing of the food.

 I put some of this on my plate, not knowing what it was, maybe some jello product with blood in it.  Turns out it was mucktuck.  The pink stuff is fat. The black stuff is skin, all from a whale. Tasted pretty good though a bit chewy.

 Then we carried kayaks we made in the past up to the pond.

 The Orthodox father blessed the boats.

 And then, everyone who wanted to got a shot at paddling the kayaks.

 I think this could be a picture of a bald eagle.  There were some ducks in the pond and the eagle was dive bombing the ducks, but without catching any. 

 Mitch Poling, boat builder from pt. Townsend and his wife Sandra.

 Mitch was building two three hatch Sugpiac kayaks with the help of a number of assistants.

This place was near our motel.  We passed it every day on the way to the apia though we never went in.  Still haven't.

And a final shot of the rug. No more empty food boxes.  We think our fast food neighbor  had moved out.