Kodiak Kraziness

The people in Kodiak are very friendly, so much so we made some pals on the ferry on the way there. Luckily one of them was a smoker and decided to go for a fag at 1:30am, this was amazingly lucky for us as he rushed back to tell us the northern lights were showing. There was a massive green arc in the sky with what looked like heart rate monitor waves coming off to the right of it. It only lasted for about ten minutes and then slowly cleared in colour until it just looked like cloud.

James, the guy who showed us the northern lights, was training to be a social worker and had attended Kodiak college. He thought his hat was pretty funny so he let us take a photo of it.

Amazingly these hats are still on sale at the college and they didn't do a reprint, very sustainable!

On arrival in Kodiak we were really hungry and were recommended the Monk's Rock sandwiches, however we were disappointed to find they had just set off on a pilgrimage to Georgia and the bakery was closed until they returned in October.

Strangely enough, later that day we found ourselves in the send off party for the Monk's Rock russian orthodox pilgrims!

The families on shore were singing traditional blessings to the pilgrims on deck and then they would reply in a different language however the ferry was still not ready to depart and they'd run out of blessings and languages so the priest took the lead from the ferry in a rendition of  'I'm a Little Teapot' (complete with actions) and the shore people replied with 'Incy Wincy spider'.....it was just like an episode of Father Ted, but with more beards.  Kodiak was already proving to be a bit odd but certainly entertaining!

We would never have been at the dock for the pilgrimage send off or known what was going on if it hadn't have been for our Kodiak host with the most Elinor.  She kindly put us up in her home for 8 days, after which we were absolutely exhausted!  Elinor was keen for us to see as much of Kodiak as we could which meant midnight cemetery tours, halibut olympia and scrabble at the senior's centre, balalaika group, driving out to Pasagshak at 'the end of the road' to see herds of buffalo, a rocket launch area and beautiful beaches, not to mention visiting Nancy Katula and organising our days around Elinor driving various turkish people to the airport at all hours of the day.

A huge salmonberry from Elinor's garden, the salmonberry bushes are on the right in the picture below

Elinor has loads of amazing stuff but not that much room for it all

The cat with no name, it had a couple but they were somewhat derogatory. Elinor took photos of the cat's wildlife crimes (mostly dead birds), which she planned to compile into a dossier for her roomate who got the cat in the first place.

Fiona's artwork at one of the shale beaches

Ebbie the dog at Balalaika group

Reassuring!

I think this is whitesands beach - from the photo this seems a somewhat misleading name

Kodiak senior's centre - best food in town

sea slug at the touch tank on Near Island at the fisheries centre

hermit crab

sea cucumber, but you can't hear it!

Crabtastic - We think this tank is great but wondered how long the occupants last as we saw one lady scream and drop two crabs - luckily straight into the water.

We spent a significant amount of time at the Kodiak Island National Wildlife Refuge visitor centre.  We had met the centre manager Ava on the ferry on the way to Kodiak as she had been chaperone to a group of Kodiak students on the school tennis team who had travelled to Homer to play tennis.  She was friends with Elinor who we couchsurfed with so we all spent most days together doing various things.....both being New Yorkers things could often get quite raucous

Elinor and Fiona at Kodiak Senior centre with custom made scrabble bag

A tight game

Cute dog at the post office

Nancy Katula and a huge balalaika, the group play for cruise ship passengers

A shot from Pillar mountain behind the town of Kodiak.  Kodiak is the second largest island in the US after Hawaii.  Spruce trees are established in the north of the island and spreading south at a rate of 1 mile every hundred years.  The south of the island which we visited for our bear trek has dense alder and birch and no coniferous trees.