Back in Kodiak

Back in Kodiak yesterday, and we weren’t too sure what to do with ourselves. Despite plans for an easy day, I ended up getting up at 6:30 and going out to photograph the harbour with Mum and Kumar. In the event, it was grey and drizzly, and I didn’t take a single picture. We spent the rest of the day taking things slowly, a long coffee in the local coffee shop, a visit to the sporting goods store and finishing up with a final group dinner before everyone else started trickling away out of Kodiak. There’s always a let down feeling at the end of these trips, especially when you come back into town in bad weather.

Today turned out to be Labor Day. I’m still not exactly sure what the point of it is, aside from not actually doing any labour. We had a hard time getting going, having failed to organize either boat trip or ATV tour as we’d planned. We tried to hire a car, and were told there were none available. After a fortifying trip to the coffee shop whilst we tried to figure out what we were going to do over the next few days, we headed off to the airport, where contrary to earlier information, we succeeded in hiring a car. Whilst we were at it, I decided to investigate the possibility of changing my return flight to Anchorage so that I could fly a day earlier with Mum and Dad, and see something of the Anchorage area. My original plans had me sitting in Anchorage airport for 6 hours between flights, not an appealing plan.

Finally with car keys in hand, we set off down the road, in the opposite direction to our first trip. The resulting ride was scenic, but not particularly long. Before we knew it, we’d very unceremoniously hit the end of the road.

Having already stopped to photograph some fishermen, we then headed back to town for a late lunch and then turned around again and came back, this time to visit Fort Abercrombie, an old military installation, with some nice views, and a museum, which we skipped.

After some to-ing and fro-ing trying to find the right road, we finished our tour of the day by a drive up to the top of Pillar Mountain, home to the wind turbines visible from the town, and with great views down to the airport and city.