I made it!

Well, I started typing that last post two days ago in the Anchorage airport when I was giving up hope of ever getting on a plane off standby. 5 minutes before the plane was to depart, they call my name, give me a seat, and I had to turn off my laptop and get on the plane! They filled our little puddle jumper to capacity (28 people, woo!), but with all the luggage, the weight made us have to stop TWICE to refuel the plane.

From Anchorage to Dutch Harbor is 792 miles (I learned this from a brochure on the plane). We stopped once at King Salmon to refuel and again at Sand Point (where we had stopped the first day to refuel). Finally made it to Dutch and I was worried I wouldn't be able to find my chief scientist, Neal, at the airport. We walk off the plane and into the "terminal", which was like a little room. I took some photos, but haven't taken them off the computer yet to post. Let's just say it's a small airport, and Neal spotted me right away.

Dutch Harbor is a cute little town, and it is connected to Uunalaska by a bridge (something new in the past couple decades), which is another little town. I'll post more on that later. Neal got me back to the boat, where I unpacked my stuff and my roommate Carwyn showed me around the ship. Then Carwyn and Denise (both on the scientific party) and I went driving around. I saw some foxes! And I've learned from them than I ever imagined. Every time they talk, I want to be like, wait, let me write that down!

Yesterday I had the day to myself in Dutch Harbor. I woke up, had a nice 3+ mile run into town, went to the Museum of the Aleutians (lots of history, lots of reading - more on this later), called a few people (yay AT&T - the only cell service that works in Dutch Harbor), and jogged back to the ship. While eating lunch, one of the NOAA Corps Ensigns (ENS), Chelsea, came in with the new ensign Kevin (who is actually working with the scientific team this leg of the trip) and a deck hand, Brian. They asked me to go kayaking because there were 3 of them and they had two 2-person kayaks so they needed one more. What an adventure! Chelsea and Brian had waterproof cameras, so I'll have to bug them to get some photos of our kayaking trip. We went against the current in the middle of Captains Bay for what felt like forever. The views were breathtaking. Seeing it from a kayak in the middle of the ocean is a little different than from the road. When we got back to the ship, we kayaked under the dock for fun (sooooo neat), and then all of us but Kevin (he had to be the photographer up above) got in the water! So now I can say that I've actually gotten in water in freezing Alaskan waters!

Time to go watch us leave port and head out to sea. Until next time followers :)