Kodiak Island

Well... here I am in Kodiak, AK, home of the Kodiak bear and the largest island in the United States or any of its territories.

The arrival of the Langseth has been delayed due to problems in port in San Diego and bad weather in transit, so I've been staying in a hotel in Kodiak for the last two nights. I got here on Friday at about 5 pm and was the first of the science team to arrive by about two hours. What did I do for those two hours? Sleep. Duh. But since then (and since meeting up with everyone else), I've seen and done quite a few cool things. Some of the cool things I've seen include but are not limited to:

Russia
Beautiful mountainous coastline (everywhere)
A bald eagle
A Russian orthodox church built in the 1700s
A herd of buffalo
Fossils on the beach
Enormous king crabs
Black-tailed deer
Boats (in large numbers)
Float planes (those small planes with ski-like "feet"... that's the scientific description, anyway)
No bears (though we've been told they haven't come down from the mountains yet... I'm really ok with that)

I've tried to include some of the best pictures I've taken so far below, just to give you an idea of how beautiful it is here. The internet on the boat is slow, so I'll try to upload as many pictures as possible before I get on board.

View from the Anchorage airport - beautiful! Strange to see non-Colorado mountains...

The best picture I have of the town of Kodiak and the view from the island - seems like pictures never do a good job of fully capturing the beauty of a place, but this one is close!

The old Russian Orthodox church just down the road. The Russians were some of the first to settle here... very cool. Also note the lovely tarp.

One of the float planes coming in for a landing!

A King crab in the aquarium we visited. To give you an idea of scale, that thing stretched out is about the size of my torso. Whoa.

Other things about Kodiak... the town is very small (population of around 6000 I believe), mostly fisherman. The people, for the most part, are very friendly, and do not have quite the strong accents I was expecting (too bad!). Everyone seems to enjoy drinking, certainly... and everyone knows that we're visiting. It definitely seems like the U.S. when you go inside restaurants or bars, but otherwise it looks very different from any other town I've ever been to. Very isolated and remote... but it definitely has its own charm. It's also very surreal to see the sun set at 12:30 am and rise at around 4. I left for the bar at around 11:15 last night and it looked like it was barely dusk! The weather is certainly chillier than I was anticipating... It's been between 40 and 50 degrees the whole time I've been here. I brought a few sweatshirts and things, but I'm beginning to get a bit worried that I didn't bring enough variety. Oh well, there's always laundry on the boat, I guess.

It's now Sunday morning, and everyone from the science team has arrived by now. Sean (my adviser at UT) and Ginger (the chief scientist aboard the cruise) were some of the last to arrive, getting in late last night. I was able to meet up with them for a beer though after they got here, so that was great. All of the other students are really great and easy to get along with, so I'm not worried about having friends on the cruise. We haven't been officially assigned rooms yet but I'll likely be bunking with a woman named Jenny, who is equally as awesome as the rest of the students. She herself is not a student, but she has a lot of at-sea experience as she's spent much of her life aboard boats as an airgun/marine tech. How cool is that?!

The latest information is that the Langseth will be arriving in port at 6:30 pm tonight. They'll need a little time to tie up, and we'll be boarding probably around 7:30. The plan is to leave port tomorrow (Monday) afternoon at around 4 pm... about 36 hours behind schedule, but they're already discussing route changes to accommodate for the time lost.

It's been fairly busy around here, so I apologize for not updating more frequently... of course I'll do what I can, but I anticipate being busier than usual the next few days as well. I really miss everyone at home! Luckily I've been able to Skype a few times with David (the bf) and Sara (the other bf (best friend)), so that's been helping, but I might not be able to do that again for awhile. Tomorrow may be the last time I talk to anyone voice to voice for 3 weeks. I'm trying not to think about it too hard. I know I'll be busy, too, and that will certainly be welcome to keep my mind off missing people.

Signing off for now... stay tuned!