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Ko. Di. Ak.
I went to Kodiak last week for work, but I also had some time to bum around the island.
The town is mostly located on a hill overlooking the harbor. There are lots of little houses with staircases leading down to the street (which this picture fails to show ... you can see the houses up on the hill, but not the stairs) -- very cool, although I'm sure living in them is no picnic, especially in the winter. Kodiak gets very little snow -- too warm -- but it can get very icy during the winter's freeze-melt-thaw-freeze cycles, the locals told me. (It was gorgeously sunny on the days I was taking these pictures, though.)
This is not a sign that says "Howdy, neighbor! C'mon up!" But I went up the road anyway. It was a gorgeous drive.
Welcome to Montanalaska. To me, Kodiak, though technically Alaskan soil, looks nothing like Alaska. It's sort of like Montana crossed with Nantucket. (Of course I've only been to Montana once, and never been to Nantucket. :D )
A Sitka blacktail deer -- a kind of mule deer native to southern parts of Alaska.
A nice view of a bay on the other side of the island from the town.
... and a beach where I went beachcombing.
The beach was strewn with stranded jellyfish ... along with apocalyptic quantities of dead salmon, the main food supply of the (in)famous gigantic Kodiak brown bears. I was a little nervous about running into a bear in the course of galivanting about on the beaches, but I didn't see any.
One of the assorted historic sights around town ... this is the Old Russian Well that was dug in the late 1700s (when Kodiak was originally settled by Russians) to provide water for the town.
A couple views of the old Russian Orthodox graveyard on one of the town's hills. It is from the Russian colonial era (prior to the purchase of Alaska by the USA) but is still used, as you can see by the bright, new-ish crosses. White picket fences like the one in the second picture surround some of the graves; others have old, unpainted wooden fences around them, and many have nothing. In mainland Alaska, the old Russian/Native graveyards have bright-colored spirit houses on top of the graves (for the dead to live in) and while they do not seem to do that here, they do use the fences (which I think are a derivation of the same thing) and the crosses have these interesting little hatlike structures on top of them.
I loved this house, although it's private property so this is as close as I could get to take a picture. I saw the roof across the treetops driving down one of the little back roads and I had to stop and snap a picture. I want a dragon on my roof too.
The town is mostly located on a hill overlooking the harbor. There are lots of little houses with staircases leading down to the street (which this picture fails to show ... you can see the houses up on the hill, but not the stairs) -- very cool, although I'm sure living in them is no picnic, especially in the winter. Kodiak gets very little snow -- too warm -- but it can get very icy during the winter's freeze-melt-thaw-freeze cycles, the locals told me. (It was gorgeously sunny on the days I was taking these pictures, though.)
This is not a sign that says "Howdy, neighbor! C'mon up!" But I went up the road anyway. It was a gorgeous drive.
Welcome to Montanalaska. To me, Kodiak, though technically Alaskan soil, looks nothing like Alaska. It's sort of like Montana crossed with Nantucket. (Of course I've only been to Montana once, and never been to Nantucket. :D )
A Sitka blacktail deer -- a kind of mule deer native to southern parts of Alaska.
A nice view of a bay on the other side of the island from the town.
... and a beach where I went beachcombing.
The beach was strewn with stranded jellyfish ... along with apocalyptic quantities of dead salmon, the main food supply of the (in)famous gigantic Kodiak brown bears. I was a little nervous about running into a bear in the course of galivanting about on the beaches, but I didn't see any.
One of the assorted historic sights around town ... this is the Old Russian Well that was dug in the late 1700s (when Kodiak was originally settled by Russians) to provide water for the town.
A couple views of the old Russian Orthodox graveyard on one of the town's hills. It is from the Russian colonial era (prior to the purchase of Alaska by the USA) but is still used, as you can see by the bright, new-ish crosses. White picket fences like the one in the second picture surround some of the graves; others have old, unpainted wooden fences around them, and many have nothing. In mainland Alaska, the old Russian/Native graveyards have bright-colored spirit houses on top of the graves (for the dead to live in) and while they do not seem to do that here, they do use the fences (which I think are a derivation of the same thing) and the crosses have these interesting little hatlike structures on top of them.
I loved this house, although it's private property so this is as close as I could get to take a picture. I saw the roof across the treetops driving down one of the little back roads and I had to stop and snap a picture. I want a dragon on my roof too.
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I wished that I could've gotten a closer look at the house with the dragon, but of course, if someone's house is screened by trees, it usually means that they are unlikely to take kindly to tourists with cameras in their front yard. :D