kodiak to dutch harbor....7 king cove and cold bay

apparently many bears frequent cold bay and izembek national wildlife refuge. we saw just the one on our tour. lots of tracks though. above tracks...below the bear sighting before he ducked back down. in the distance is our ferry.

here we are in izembek. the migrating birds have already migrated through. it was pretty and cloudy. i'll post a few more later...this is maria, sandra and i at the signage.

above is the phonebooth at the end of the dock.

we arrived in cold bay mid morning. the dock is super long. i never walked it as they had a drawing on board the ship the night before for a tour bus to izembek wildlife refuge. 3/4 of our group had gotten spots. there were only 15 spots. you were supposed to put your name in once for the drawing and i think tanya and i followed the rules. sandra was mortified when the guy said if he pulls your name out twice you lose your seat. she hadn't picked up on the rules..i think she squirmed the entire drawing after that for fear she'd be caught and publicly humiliated. people really wanted those spots. he did take several more from the boat out there in the public safety officers vehicle. i think overall it went okay. a few who got spots gave them up to others who really wanted them and they had pulled a few spares and so one of those got to come too. i guess they are working on getting a breakwater and a harbor. my friend maria had asked that we take photo's of a phone booth at the end of this dock. it is seemingly out in the middle of nowhere. when we asked about it we were told it allowed one to phone to the end of the dock as it's like a 1/2 mile walk to shore.

i couldn't find a boat to photograph with cold bay as it has no harbor so i had to settle for this. nothing with king cove on it either. dang...i'll just have to go back.

above is us leaving king cove...still not very light out yet.

if you see lights in the night you have reached something of consequence in the aleutians. not much out there otherwise. we arrived in king cove early. we didn't get off though i did actually wake up and get out of my bunk. both early morning stops i woke to. i must have noticed the change in the boat sway as we slowed and got closer to a landing. sleeping on a boat is very soothing i find.

i would have enjoyed spending time in king cove and our stops at all these small towns was never long enough. i would love to spend a night or two in each place at least exploring what is there and taking pictures. actually, i love living in a place for a time and getting all the seasons of it.

king cove and cold bay our next stop are both still on the alaska peninsula. they are only about 20-25 miles apart and they are hoping to build a road to connect the two places. the problem is that it would go through izembek national wildlife refuge. a huge area for migrating geese (canadian, brant and emperor) along with thousands of other birds. personally i say let em build the dirt road. they live in the middle of nowhere as it is. king cove is fishing community and cold bay is more of a government town. cold bay has the huge runway. king cove has a small runway located between two volcano's and it has wind and fog issues. the cold bay runway was once the largest in alaska and still is able to take on the jumbo jets should an emergency landing be required. it has happened before with planes traveling from asia. we were told as well that it is an emergency landing place for the space shuttle if need be. it would almost be like a moon landing out there too. hehe.

there is a hovercraft which i guess is used to transport the king cove residents to cold bay for flights. it's a unique life living in the bush of alaska. king cove has around 800 residents. i believe there is also a fair sized transient population due to fishing year round. they have good ports there.

below is just another view of the church in sand point.