World War II

There is an unbelievable amount of remnants from World War II here on the island - some people have bunkers facing the sea in their front yards. Some of the more interesting bunkers and remains are on Mount Ballyhoo and I took these pictures a few days ago when we were hiking around. I will need several more trips up there to explore the whole area as there are too many sites to visit in just one trip. There is also a World War II museum here that I haven't gotten a chance to visit - it's on the "list" of things to see and do!

Great Day In Unalaska

It's late so I'm going to keep this a brief post. After my 12 hour shift at work we stopped by the galley real quick to grab some grub (Saturday night is always steak night so I threw a nice one in a plastic bag along with a baked potato and some cucumber slices) and then we headed to the trailhead to Ugadaga Bay. It was a great hike, just 2.2 miles each way with a fair amount of elevation gain. This is a trail from ancient times that was used as a portage from one side of the island to the other. After our hike we hit the galley again (peanut butter cookies and milk for me and an English muffin with ham and cheese for Goldfish) then home. Lots of good pictures; I will post them soon! Gotta shower and head to bed, I have to get up in 6 hours . . . . . the pictures are of a trawler returning to port taken from Mount Ballyhoo a couple days ago. The boat is just passing a buoy that rings a bell as it rocks in the waves - when the wind is just right you can hear that buoy from our place.

Eagles, Eagles Everywhere

I don't guess I'll ever tire of seeing eagles every day and I was thrilled to see one perched on the railing on the front of the building I live in. I ran back inside and got my camera and snapped a couple shots while he waited patiently. I love watching them play in the air, chasing each other and performing complex aerial maneuvers for the sheer joy of it. The area by the small boat harbor seems to have an especially exuberant population of eagles that like to showcase their skills on a regular basis.

Trip Over The Pass

I think I mentioned we attempted the pass a couple days ago but were blocked by snow. We did see this very cool photogenic fox which sat on the other side of a small creek and watched us exploring. There is a great trail up there I want to hike sometime in the next week if I can find the energy - sometimes the tank is almost empty after work and I can just manage a mile or two walk like tonight. You can see there is still plenty of snow up there!

Pollock Season Continues

This is our flagship trawler the F/V Destination approaching the dock last night just as I was getting off shift. We finished offloading it this afternoon and began offloading the Bering Rose. The Destination holds over a million pounds of pollock, a truly impressive fish catcher! What is equally amazing to me is the tiny amount of non-pollock bycatch - maybe 20 pounds of herring, a couple sharks, a halibut, and a half dozen Irish Lords, along with a half tote of cod - just a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the total catch.

Tonight all my adventuring caught up with me and I took a nap after work in the sun coming in the window at home. Hard work and little sleep had finally took their toll after three weeks on the island and I slept for two hours and can hopefully get back to sleep now - good night all . . .

Battle Wagon

Here is the new addition to the family in all it's rusted glory, the perfect island vehicle. This was Goldfish's vehicle when she lived before, and when she left 7 months ago she gave it away to a mechanic friend. We were delighted to discover the vehicle was not being used and ran better than ever - we got it for $250, the price of the new parts. The top picture is from tonight's adventure on Mount Ballyhoo and the bottom picture shows where we had to turn around last night when we tried to drive through the pass to Summer's Bay - a few more weeks out to clear out the last of the snow drifts across the road and we'll try it again. Lots more pictures to share from both adventures in the days to come . . . . . . . .

So Many Choices

I was reviewing pictures to try to decide what to post and I was just overwelmed - when I started posting I wanted to try to post a photo everyday and wondered if I could possibly find that much interesting to share. Now I see I can not leave the house or look out the window for two months and I'd still be able post new subject matter. Chico the Wonderdog flew back in from Anchorage today, none the worst for wear except for the shaved patches where the vet inserted IVs. We have a new addition to the family, a 4WD GMC Jimmy we got for $250 - I call it the Battle Wagon (okay, honestly, I'm the only one that calls it the Battle Wagon but I'm hoping it catches on . . . ). It greatly increases our range and in the two days we have had it we have been some amazing places. Just an hour ago I was sitting on a 1000 foot cliff watching fishing boats return to port and basking in the sun. There has been a break from fish so I have been working with refrigeration for a couple days but the break is over and there will be some long days ahead!

One of our favorite things to do is beachcomb - the picture shows our haul of beach glass, rocks and shells from the beach in front of the apartment from a 20 minute walk a couple days ago. Goldfish finds all the beach glass, I can't seem to spot it - too distracted by the rocks maybe??

View From The Living Room

I know I've mentioned we love watching boat traffic through the channel from the living room - just thought I'd share the sight of the F/V Defender leaving port and heading to the fishing grounds as seen from my couch. The parking area is where the boat captains and crew that fish for our company leave their vehicles when they are working. The boats have to navigate parallel to the beach to stay in the channel as they leave and arrive in port giving us a great view!

Cool Things

This photo is actually a very poor rendering of what I actually saw - a few days ago, just as I arrived at the summit of Haystack, I looked up at the antenna array and saw the sun shining through the fog and backlighting two eagles. You can just make out the sun; it looks like the moon does during the day sometimes. My camera didn't know what to make of the light situation and this was the best I got out of several pictures I took, and it really doesn't do the scene justice at all.

That got me thinking about things I've seen lately where I didn't have a camera handy, where the image remains only in my mind. Boat traffic is always a joy - with the channel only maybe 100 yards away, seeing big freighters and fishing boats is always fun. One just passed by as I was writing this, and if you've watched Deadliest Catch you know how big these boats are and what a presence they have on the water. About 20 minutes earlier I was emailing Zack and had to stop for a bit and watch the porpoises jumping in the channel - something cool is always happening out the window.

We were beach combing for seaglass tonight and I found an old rusty knife with a jury-rigged leather handle where someone had wrapped leather around the knife tang tightly and then screwed wood screws in to hold it all together - what stories that knife could probably tell before it washed up on the beach in Unalaska.

The very coolest thing in the last few days I saw was a steady stream of tiny polluck scales running across the dock and into the ocean in the bright sunshine - from the second story of the plant it looked like a braided river of liquid silver, ever changing. Amazing!

I really like this picture of the church I took last week; the play of the light and clouds and the centering of the church. Quick post tonight, we stayed out too late at the Unisea sushi bar with friends and it's past my bedtime. Cheers everyone!

Unalaska Courthouse

I get tickled everytime I see the courthouse down the street. Yes, that is the only sign identifying it as a courthouse . . . . small town . . . you can also see it is almost right next to the Russian Orthodox church. We hiked Haystack tonight and then went down to the dock and looked at boats. It was a gorgeous sunny day today! Also went to the library and drooled over their Alaska collection . . . another great day on the island.

Happy 4th of July!

I spent the day today insulating pipe from a scissor lift. The day started out chilly and foggy (in the top picture you can see me with my hood up and the grey skies - also, you can see I shaved as it isn't worth being around seafood with a beard as you need to have a beard net anytime you enter the plant) and ended gorgeous and sunny (in the middle picture you can see the blue skies - the bottom picture shows an almost-insulated valve assembly - the interesting thing about insulating pipe is all the hard work is hidden! ). After work we were social and attended a BBQ; great food, fun dogs to play with now we're waiting for the fireworks scheduled for midnight to end the day.

Russian Orthodox Church

A hundred yards or so down the street is this Russian Orthodox church, similar to the one in Nilnilchik. This photo was taken partway up Haystack Hill and if you look closely you can see the eagle on the left-hand spire of the church - a favorite resting place. The building to the left used to house the bishop - both the church and the bishop's house date to the 1800's and are definitely a focal point in the area.

I have decided to not discuss work too much here, just like I rarely talked about Alaska Indoor Sports or the Kennebec Journal in my other blog, but I have to mention one of our boats is on the way back to the plant with fish - the season has begun! It will be nice to be done with all the preparation and into the thick of things until the season ends in November!

APL Dock

When you look out the living room window, one of the major features is the APL Dock where the big container ships are loaded and unloaded. Watching this process through binoculars is a favorite activity - in fact I am watching one being off loaded as I blog tonight. These three pictures show the view of APL from Strawberry Hill where we hiked last week. It gives a better view of the process from the side - the top view shows the whole barge and crane, the second photo is a closeup showing a container being lowered but still about 50 feet above the truck, and the last picture shows that same container almost all the way lowered. It is amazing how fast the crane operator can complete this process, and the trucks are just lined up one after the other. There is always something interesting happening out the window - either the ocean side from the living room, or the river side out the bedrooms. Last night a huge Russian ship unlike anything we had ever seen docked briefly, probably to take on fuel and supplies. It looked like a research vessel of some sort.

Bunker Hill

We had last Sunday off and celebrated by riding our bikes to the Bunker Hill trail head and hiking to the top. You can see from the pictures why it is called Bunker Hill! If you look at the panoramic shot at the top of my blog you can see Bunker Hill to the right side. The hill in the middle with the antennas is Haystack Hill. I live right at the foot of Haystack so it is the best option for a quick workout.

The top picture is taken near the top and you can see the bunker at the summit. The middle picture is from the summit and shows some of the other fortifications up there. My favorite is the third picture showing the bunker and the view to the north.

It's hard to believe a week has gone by since hiking Bunker Hill. Today was an optional day at work - I was in the middle of a project and chose to work; Goldfish took the day off to relax, go to the market and made supper. No walk to day for the first time since we arrived, just a day to relax, read, and work on the bikes a bit.

Chico

Today was a bit of a sad day as we had to air freight Chico to Anchorage to see the vet. He had been suffering from diarrhea for the last few days and always needed a little help with the ol' hygiene after our long walks. Finally, last night he was up all night vomiting and needed to go outside every couple hours so we decided to get him some care as Unalaska only gets the services of a traveling vet every few months, the next visit is still almost a month away. The 24 hour vet clinic in Anchorage said he has gastritis, probably from the antibiotics he took following a tooth extraction before we flew him out here. He should be re-joining us soon and the house just isn't the same without him . . . .

I walked to the library tonight and on the way back I counted 52 eagles perched on roofs, poles, and a few on the ground - in maybe a half mile. I took the top picture the other day when we borrowed a truck to go to the grocery store to get a trash can and to the base of Strawberry Hill so we could hike. I was waiting in the truck with Chico while Goldfish ran in. The second picture is Chico at the Memorial Park last week on one of our walks. We miss you Chico, the house is too quiet!

Views From the Neighborhood

Tonight we hiked up Haystack Hill, the hill just across the river from our place. We walk down the street a couple blocks to the little foot bridge to the other side and hike to the very top where the cell phone towers are located. Today I walked the whole way without stopping and got a good workout in. When we walked the couple blocks to the footbridge we saw an eagle divebomb into the water just 30 feet away, missing the fish he was aiming for and looking foolish about it.

The top picture shows our apartment - we have a nice big living room, two bedrooms, and a kitchen and dining area. It was fully furnished with decent furniture, even a computer desk and an entertainment center with a TV which we have not used since we got here. The cable is plugged directly into the cable modem and I have no idea what channels came with the basic cable package we had to get to have broadband.

The second picture shows an eagle sitting in a shallow part of the river right across from the apartment, and I thought it was cool how the eagle in the last picture was peeking down at me from on top of the telephone pole, also right across from the apartment.

Walk, Walk, Walk

We took a loooong walk tonight, maybe a bit too long according to my legs (to their credit, they did do quite a bit of ladder climbing at work today where I spent the morning climbing around on a condenser stack clearing disperser nozzles of blockages - the most interesting being a bird bone). We walked for almost 2 hours, out past the landfill and back, at least 5 or 6 miles. Lots of eagles and ravens and I saw my first fox!

The pictures above are not from today, they are from another of our favorite walks up Haystack Hill, right across the river from our apartment. The top picture shows our place, the right hand unit on the four-plex. I've learned that I can keep a skiff on the riverbank anywhere there is room if I choose. The middle picture shows some of the view from the backside of Haystack, and the bottom picture shows the entire plant including our apartment taken from Haystack, similar to the night time picture in my first post taken by someone else. It's amazing that the plant was such a mystery just a week ago and now I can name all the buildings in the picture and have worked projects in many of them.

In the top picture you can see how shallow the channel gets on the ocean side at low tide. Big fishing boats and boats of all kinds use that channel, right by our living room window - I love it! Out the bedroom windows on the river side of our place I can watch eagles pretty much any time of day - I'll post some pictures of them soon.

Work In Progress

This blog is going to be really rough for awhile, although I did get a panoramic photo incorporated into the header. I have so many pictures to post already, I didn't want to wait until everything was perfect in my format.

Every day we go biking or walking or hiking. This is a favorite spot to bring the dog, Memorial Park, about a 10 minute walk down the beach from the house. I love the look of the trees there, shaped by the wind and looking like they are in motion even when the air is still.

A New Beginning

In less than 24 hours Goldfish and I - along with Chico the Wonderdog - leave for Dutch Harbor to start a new chapter in our lives. The long trek that began back in Maine will end and I will be Home. A new job in an exotic locale, no more storage unit and a great partner in crime to live life's adventure to the fullest and explore the island. This past week we have tried to squeeze as much time with our respective families as possible as the realization of our long absence from the mainland looms closer. I'm not sure when I'll be back on-line to update this but I wanted to draw the line in the sand delineating the new start. I'm excited and can't wait to be Home . . . . .