Crossing the Pacific, Dutch Harbor and Kodiak Alaska May 9-16

Five days at sea – lots of time to read, listen to lectures, watch movies, exercise, and gaze at the ocean. But, there wasn’t much ocean to see. Most days were so foggy there was literally no horizon line. But, that’s the way the ship rolls – and it did. We only used our Relief Bands for about one and a half days (the battery acupressure wristbands – used for oncology patients who are going through chemo and motion sickness. They send a buzzing sensation up into your palm – a bit like if you sleep funny and your hand falls asleep.). Glad we had them – they really work on queasy stomachs. I think our waves got up to 15 feet or so – minor compared to the Antarctica trip but enough to actually use the stair railing to keep from falling over.

Besides the great talks by Adam Tanner, Goleta Massle (known as “Glow”) has hit our best list for shipboard speakers. She’s a naturalist with a knack for making all things fauna/geology etc. fun. Anyone who starts her talks with a viewer discretion notice (she uses accurate words for birth, death and reproduction) and, encourages passengers to stop her if you have questions anytime you see her on the ship (she pointed out she has red hair, and dresses like a crayon) is bound to be entertaining. Even Ron (the guy who never took a course in anything alive til he got his viticulture degree when we moved to Sonoma) looked forward to her talks.

Neither Ron nor I had ever watched the movie, Groundhog Day, and it played in the ship’s theater in honor of crossing the International Date Line (as Ron said in his Facebook post – “We failed Friday so we had to repeat it.”) What a fun movie! He even found an article somebody wrote who, in a weird burst of curiosity, added up the number of repeated years that Bill Murray lived, based on the experiences he had and the knowledge/skills he accrued by the end of the movie.

I think we’ve been to Alaska about 4 times – large cruise ships, small cruise ship (69 passengers), and a Road Scholar land trip to 3 national parks (Denali, Katmai, and Kenai). After seeing it for the first time from a large cruise ship, we knew we’d come back. This time, our first stop was Dutch Harbor, in the city of Unalaska in the Aleutian chain. Claim to fame – was one of the islands other than Hawaii that was bombed in WWII (lots of military artifacts and another example of native people being forcibly removed from their homes), is the site of Deadliest Catch TV show, and is the top fishing port in the country. It’s tiny – only 4000 people or so, and the population unsurprisingly swells during the fishing season. The tour options today were a hop-on/hop-off bus (Alaska uses school buses as tour buses) to see the local sites. We opted for the Museum of the Aleutians – definitely worthwhile.

After Dutch Harbor came a day at sea and then another “best” for the trip – a day on Kodiak Island. We chose to go on a hike in Fort Abercrombie State Park, about 200 hilly acres with a lake, forests of mossy sitka spruce, budding wildflowers, ocean and snow covered mountain views and BIG dogs! It was clear that this was an exercise spot for the locals and all the dogs we encountered were gleeful, friendly, and very glad to be out and about (and the ones in the leash-free area were polite). You’ll be spared photos because by the time I got through greeting a dog, they were off again. Labs, golden retrievers, and huskies, oh my! It was a glorious sunny day and there were enough war artifacts to keep Ron’s camera busy. After 5 days of fog, it was a perfect way to spend the day. We’d definitely come back.

When we got back down to the water, Ron headed out to the Gulf.

To Ron’s right, (notice the same rock is on the left) yes, I did capture one dog in action. A lovely chocolate lab fetching a stick.