Kodiak Island

 Kodiak Island was the next to last stop in Alaska. We travel for a day and the next before ending our Alaskan adventure at Dutch harbor. 

Kodiak is another of those small fishing towns offering a tourist stop as a second gig. We took a school bus to the site of three different small museums and had the opportunity to take a few photos. The ships itself does not necessarily pull up to the dock either because it is too large or because other large vessels arrived first. When this is the case, the trip to shore is accomplished using a tender. I think that is just another name for life boat because they have maybe 8 of these and they seem pretty much unsinkable. 

Kodiak is home to the Kodiak Brown bear and no we did not see one. This bear is very large closer to polar bears than the relative grizzly. The museums all seem to have a plastic or stuffed version and Cindy was willing to pose to provide a comparison. The second image comes from an museum focused on the artwork of indigenous artists.

One museum located on the coast was focused on the military efforts during WWII. There was concern that the U.S. could be invaded from the North and several small outposts with a gun or two were located on the coast of Alaska. This one had working communications gear and because my dad was stationed somewhere in the South Pacific manning a radar installation I have always been interested in such equipment. When I was a kid we had some old radio equipment in our attic and we strung a wire from an upstairs bedroom to a nearby tree so the ham radio gear would work. Pop would sometimes sit there with us and write down the messages in Morse code that we could pick up. It was cool. He would write in all caps for some reason. I always wanted to get a qualify for a ham license when I was a kid, but thought I would be more capable of learning the code when I got older. When I got older I drifted on to other interests.

The coast of Alaska qualifies as a rain forest. I have always collected images simply pointing the camera into forests because I enjoy the effect you can sometimes produce. Here is an example from Kodiak. You should be able to expand the image by clicking on it and the larger image makes the depth of the photo more obvious.