Ferry to the Aleutians

Back on July 7, we were in Homer, staying with friends. After a nice breakfast on the 8th, we borrowed a car and drove to a cool local grocery store called Save U More. It is still in Alaska so didn’t shock us with its low prices but we did manage to get lunch and snack provisions for our ferry trip. We also did a load of laundry, a simple but very welcome thing on a trip like this.

We picked up Pam at her house and drove down to the beach for a walk. The weather had improved to 100% perfect, warm and sunny, I think kind of rare for Homer. We walked to the shore and I even waded in – the water felt warmer than in Santa Cruz but maybe I was just imagining that. Pam had us over for lunch after and she served the best-ever salmon chowder.

After lunch, Tom drove all of us out to see his cabin, some distance out of town. He and his family used to live there all year, skiing in the last mile from where the road is plowed. It’s a gorgeous site, up about 400m, surrounded by open space land that has lots of ski trails in the winter.

We had an early dinner at Tom’s house; he went all out and marinated a big piece of black cod, my absolute favorite fish. I hadn’t had any for a long time and it was so tasty. Also some halibut, salad and roasted veggies that we bought at Save U More. Dessert was an amazing homemade rhubarb pie with ice-cream. We are finding rhubarb everywhere in Alaska and that’s a great thing. Tom drove us down to the ferry terminal, out at the end of the Homer Spit. We arrived at the perfect time, two hours before the 9pm departure. We checked in and waited only five minutes before boarding. Getting on early gave us a great choice of camping spots on the top deck Solarium.

The Tustumena recently celebrated her 60th birthday and is a mainstay of the Alaskan State Maritime Highway system. My mom had ridden on her a few times before but it was my first time. We settled in and enjoyed being out on the deck in warm, sunny weather. It was a little loud from the engines up on the Solarium but I slept well that first night, all night long.

In the morning, we landed at Kodiak Island where we had visited in 2017. We landed around 7am and walked along the water to a coffee shop for breakfast. We checked out the Russian Church, then split up – I went for a longer walk out to the airport, looping back along the water, about 8 km. When I got back, the Kodiak History Museum was open so we went in. They had lots of great exhibits – my favorite was a waterproof gut-parka on display.

We left Kodiak at noon, and now we were on new ground (water) for me. Unfortunately the weather crapped out a bit. I was taking a nap up in the Solarium in the afternoon and when I woke up my sleeping bag was wet. It turned out the gaskets around the glass roof pieces were leaking all over. The weather wasn’t improving so we moved down two decks and staked out a nice place in the movie theater. It’s small, and for the rest of the trip, we ended up sharing the space with a couple that had a big thick blow-up mattress. In the evening we docked at Old Harbor, but it was so rainy and windy that we both opted out of going ashore. This turned out to be very lucky because a giant piece of construction equipment had to be unloaded and it was about one inch narrower than the gangway for vehicles. So it took about half an hour to unload during which time all passengers who had gone ashore were forced to wait in the rain. After a nice dinner in the dining room, I slept well in the theater.

Our next day on the Tustumena featured two landings. In the morning we visited Chignik and in the late evening, just before sunset, we landed at Sand Point. Both of these landings were too short (about an hour) to really see the towns since in both cases, there was a 1-2 km walk from the ferry dock to the town. But in each, I picked a target, the Russian Church, then fast-walked there, took a photo and came back. I was the only passenger going all the way into town at both of these landings.

On the 11th of July, we had two landings in the morning. First at 6am, King Cove. Just like the previous two landings it required a really fast walk, quite a way, to get to “downtown”.

A few hours later we landed at Cold Bay. This was a special landing because we had three full hours. The Izembek National Wildlife Refuge is near Cold Bay and the staff there really go out of their way. They brought two busses plus two trucks to give as many people as would fit a tour. There was a random lottery on board, with 58 people signing up for about 40 places. We were at breakfast when the results were announced and one of the guys we shared our table with ran out and photographed the highlighted and non-highlighted names. He and his buddy were split, as were the two of us. Ma graciously gave me her spot since she had been a couple of times. I knew it was important to her to go but we would be back in a few days so I took it. We landed and I boarded a bus. But I wasn’t all that surprised at the Visitor Center stop when she walked out of the other bus! She has her ways.

The Visitor Center had a great map, stuffed animals and some free gifts for us, then we loaded back up and drove about 14 km to the edge of the Izembek Lagoon. At Grant Point there is a viewing kiosk, nice and dry in the rain. It was raining lightly when I did the short hike to the point itself. The clouds were thick but it was still beautiful.

After everyone had a look we headed back and were treated to a short tour through some of the dirt roads of Cold Bay, then reboarded the ship just in time for lunch. Finally, at 5pm, we had our third landing of the day, at False Pass on Unimak Island. We were finally off the end of the Alaskan Peninsula, onto our first Aleutian Island. Again the town was a bit far but at least we had longer this time so it wasn’t such a rush and other passengers got to see the town. Other than the fish processing plant, nothing was happening although some enterprising kids were selling little pieces of glass for outrageous prices plus salmon poke and one kid offered me a 10 minute tour of the town for $10.

After another nice sleep in the theater, we woke up on July 12, the big day we’d been waiting for where we got to visit Dutch Harbor for eight hours. There was also a 5am stop at Akutan, but we both just turned over and went back to sleep, knowing we would stop there at a more reasonable time on the trip back. We landed at Dutch Harbor, the furthest west point served by the ferry system, at 9:30. We quickly spotted a taxi-van and climbed aboard. All the other people were only going to the airport but the driver was happy to take us all the way to Unalaska. We figured we’d start out far away and work our way back to the ferry throughout the day. From the Post Office we walked over a bridge and visited the Russian Church which was pretty. We walked all through the town but there was almost nothing open. We checked out a WW2 memorial park then called our taxi driver back.

She dropped us at the Museum of the Aleutians, maybe ⅔ of the way back to the ferry. The museum was great. I watched the whole show about the sad story of the forced evacuation of the Aleut people from these islands during WW2. It was just like the forced internment of Japanese Americans in California and other western states except the excuse here was that they needed to be protected from the Japanese. The Japanese did invade several Aleutian Islands in June, 1943. But these US citizens were taken away with one hour notice, allowed to bring one suitcase and all their houses and infrastructure were dynamited so the Japanese couldn’t use them. Another “not our finest hour” bit of history.

We looked around nearby for a restaurant and went in a fish processing company cafeteria but they would only serve employees. We walked over to a famous local place, the Norvegian Rat Saloon. It was big and friendly and had nice food and drinks, of course at Aleutian prices. I really enjoyed a shrimp sandwich lunch there and bought a souvenir beer glass. It was only 1.3 km to a World War II Visitor Center we wanted to visit so we walked over. It was closed for another half hour and we were getting a little tired so just walked the final 1.5 km back to the ferry, making it with over an hour to spare.

That evening was our last on the ferry and we had a nice final dinner in the dining room. Later we landed again at Akutan. Since we had slept through the previous landing early in the morning, this time we got off and walked all through town. The dock was right next to the town and the path was all boardwalk. The locals drive around in ATVs as cars wouldn’t fit on the boardwalks. In the last few minutes before leaving, I walked to a big church and saw the door was unlocked. I went in and the pastor welcomed me and gave me a tour. Connected next door was a full sized gym, with a beautiful basketball court. He showed me photos of the local soccer team and gave me a bible book.

Back on board we settled down to sleep for the last time this year on the Tustumena. The ferry is a really nice way to travel. Many of our fellow passengers were going the whole way, Homer → Dutch Harbor → Homer, which takes about eight days.