Why is the Alaska part of our trip split up into 3 parts? Because we were there for 11 days. That’s a lot of days. And we made 3 different stops in 3 different ports, the last port being Dutch Harbor of “Deadliest Catch” fame.

Beautiful, isn’t it? From what I understand, Dutch Harbor is just the major harbor on the Aleutian island of Unalaksa. Yes, Unalaska, Alaska. Is there an Unoregon in Oregon? No. An Unnew Jersey in New Jersey? Actuall, maybe. But anyway, there we were.

The Aleutians were a Japanese target during WWII, which is why the US military built a bunch of defensive installations on the islands. There’s these run-down huts all over the place, in addition to a few now-gunless gun emplacements.

We saw at least 10 different bald eagles while we were there. Unfortunately, the adults were impossible to get close to (maybe fortunately, as they could rip our faces off with their talons). This adolescent was perched down a hillside we were driving on, and the road was sufficiently hidden from his view that we were able to get a few pictures without scaring him off.

If you’ve never seen “Deadliest Catch,” it’s about possibly the most dangerous job in the world: Alaskan King Crab fishing. All their boats are based out of Dutch Harbor. We did some crab fishing ourselves, except we pulled up the crab pots BY HAND. Here’s the spoils.

So then it was back to Tacoma, Washington. Here I am, spotting land. I was an integral part of the voyage.

Should I file this under “C” for can or “E” for empty?

Our arrival. Our dock is on the right, and that’s the impressive Mt. Ranier in the background.

Next Up: Crackheads in Vancouver, driving Rt. 1 on the California coast, and on to San Francisco.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 9:17 am by cfrakes and is filed under Tour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.