Kodiak, AK

I was in Kodiak all last week for a fisheries conference.  It was a great place for a fisheries conference since it’s definitely a town where there are two primary types of employment – fisheries (fishing, processing) and the Coast Guard.  I was fortunate enough to get to see both up close.  I’ll post about the fish processing tour and the Coast Guard hangar tour separately (keep reading, they should be below).  I’ll also post a lot more of my photos from the week on my flickr site (http://www.flickr.com/photos/steadyrain/).

First, some details on Kodiak, in case you’re curious.  It’s stunningly beautiful (I’m starting to sound like a broken record though, seems like everywhere in this state could be called the same!).  The city of Kodiak is small by lower-48 standards but big for AK, with about 6000 people.  It’s about a 1 hour flight from Anchorage, either by Era Airlines or Alaska Airlines.  I was on Era for the flight there, it was a twin prop DASH-8 that seats about 40 or so.  The Alaska Airlines flights use a larger plane, often with half the cabin divided off for cargo and the back half with seats for passengers.  I’ve heard lots of tales of very rough flights, sounds like the winds can get pretty high and toss the planes around.   In a lot of the smaller airports around AK the planes taxi down the runway to the end and then whip a shitty and take off (pretty sure the pilots have another name for the manoeuver, but I call a spade a spade).  I managed to take this picture as we turned for the take off.  You’d hate the botch the take-off on a runway like this, not a lot of room for error.

One of the tour options was a visit to the windmills on Pillar Mountain.  I didn’t go on that tour, but I heard from those who did some interesting tidbits.  The city is currently largely powered by diesel, which is expensive and obviously has to be shipped in.  The windmills are relatively new and becoming very popular with the locals.  I don’t remember how much power is currently generated with them (20% is sticking in my head), but the city (maybe even the whole island?) hopes to be 98-99% wind powered by 2020.  That’s pretty neat-o.

Much like Juneau, there’s not a lot of roads on Kodiak.  Most of the ‘Kodiak’ grizzly bear viewing is far from the city of Kodiak and reached by boat or small plane.  Halibut fishing is also a huge attraction, as it should be since they’re so yummy.   I would absolutely love to live in Kodiak…I liked the vibe of the city and I’d fish every day I could and watch the storms roll in when I couldn’t.