Kayaking in Kodiak

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Just Kidding! Just couldn’t come up with something with a “K” that applied. With a 6:30AM arrival in Kodiak Alaska, we were just rising, sleeping in a bit before our 11AM tour of Kodiak sites and Russian Tea. We had a leisurely breakfast, and John resumed his eggs benedict with sausage and potato cakes, and Sharon had a French toast. Our tablemates were a couple, the man had eaten lunch with us on the boat tour while the Amsterdam was docked in Anchorage (and after a bus ride thru the tunnel to Whittier) and his wife. His wife wasn’t on the earlier expedition, and he had alluded to her not feeling well, but Sharon and I were both surprised by her saying that 14 days on a cruise was too much and she was ready to go home. I thought she was kidding at first, but it became clear she wasn’t.

After breakfast, we finished up and posted our blog from yesterday. It was time to go ashore, for another splendid but definitely cool day, overcast, with patches of blue. There were school busses waiting to shuttle folks to town, but we needed to wait for a smaller white bus. Ours was the first such bus to arrive, which seemed to annoy some of the folks on the Wildlife Tour.

We drove down cannery row, which our driver said is really a misnomer since there if really not that much canning going one, with newer technology of flash freezing being prevalent. On the dock we spied a young fisherman, who is a commercial fisherman, cleaning his catch for the day at a public workbench. He was more than happy to hold up one of his larger fish to those of us on our side of the bus. He was reluctant to walk around the bus to the other side, but was coaxed to step into the front of the bus to hold up his fish. He explained his hesitance as “Those birds have their eyes on my roe.” About a dozen filets had already been prepared and stacked on the bench, and the salmon eggs were in a tub there too.

We then drove to the St. Herman’s Chapel and Seminary. This was a log cabin structure for the Russian Orthodox Church that boasts an 80% membership among native Alaskans. This traces back to the effective work of early Russian missionaries at the end of the eighteenth century when this nation was first being formed. This chapel had been rebuilt from original plans using a log cabin kit, and except for the round logs that comprised the walls, very nearly duplicated the original chapel, including a copula bell tower that leaks just as the original one did. In Roman Orthodox Churches there are no pews, because parishioners stand for all services, which can be quite long. We had to wait some for the priest to come and tell some of the history of Kodiak Island and the early missionaries, of the saints honored on it walls, including St. Herman from this area whose image appears in one of the icons. We went next to the Resurrection Russian Orthodox cathedral, a smallish wooden structure, but again impressive inside with many saints depicted in icon pictures on the walls.

Our bus then took us on the first “Bridge to Nowhere”, not the one made famous in a recent election, which was funded by a combination of federal funds and local funds raised through a sales tax that remains to this day. Although at that time, the bridge crossed a river to access an uninhabited area, it turned into a boon for the town. The road now accesses the large boat harbor and a gravel mining operation. Locals refer to living in Kodiak as “Living on the Rock”. It is primarily granite, with shale near the surface. Only a small amount of very rich topsoil supports luscious green growth that covers the island. This was enriched in 1912 when the Kenai Peninsula volcano deposited tons of volcanic ash on the island, so thick that inhabitants at the time needed to be evacuated. There are about 500 boats that moor in the new harbor.

We arrived at the community center where a local group played numerous three-string instruments (from the piccolo balalaika size up to a very large bass balalaika). They played many Russian songs during our Russian tea that included a sweet apple infused tea, a savory hot meatless borscht, a meat pie and a Russian tea cake. The borscht was prepared by a French chef, and was pureed and had sour crème added and served warm. Prior to boarding the bus for our tour, those returning from and earlier Russian tea trip couldn’t say enough about how good the borscht was. And it did taste good. Later that night; however, I may have discovered the secret why the borscht was so good. I’m sensitive to MSG, and after consuming my borscht, also Sharon’s (after she tried a tiny spoonful), I awoke after retiring to bed and sleeping a couple of hours, and found I couldn’t sleep, I had a mild headache, and my mouth felt the way it does after consuming MSG. So just a word of warning, if you want to try the Russian borscht, it may have some (not a lot) MSG. If it had a lot, I wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep in the first place.

The performers told about how Kodiak was about the same longitude as the Hawaiian Islands, and so they consider themselves the northern most island of the Hawaiian chain. For their final song they performed an aloha number (Farewell to thee) that sounded great with the ukulele sounds coming from the balalaikas and the singers donning leis and doing hula arm movements.

We returned to our busses and drove out the highway a bit in search of bears. They had spotted a bear on the morning expedition, but we were not to be so lucky. We stopped by a creek and saw many salmon running. We returned to the ship, but too late to make the trivia challenge. We went up to the grill, as the Lido was also closed, and went to the grill. For some reason, Sharon didn’t get enough to eat at the Russian Tea. She got a plain hamburger which she said hit the spot. We then made our way to bingo.

We found out that the Cruise Director JC had disembarked at Anchorage to return to England for the funeral of his grandfather. It was Sharon’s turn to buy the bingo cards so she examined them carefully and selected the one she wanted to play, because it had her numbers 13 and 53 on the green card. Of course, I wasn’t too upset because my green card had both 3 and 17 (for my Saint Patrick’s Day birthday on it, just like the one I won with earlier). Today we played the normal bingo (or 4 corners), then the small picture frame again, then the Big-X on the green card, and final blackout on the yellow card. People who had pictures of their grandchildren got a bonus card to play for this final game, where the jackpot was now up to $80,000 for a winning card in 46 numbers or less. I was among the first three to stand for the Big-X, and after several more numbers, it seemed that about one third of the room was standing (but not Sharon). And then they called B-13 and I yelled bingo, winning $224. There was a pretty good sized crowd today, and I had the only valid bingo for this game. The winner of the first game, the normal bingo, also won the blackout bingo, and he got booed a bit.

We next made our way to the 9-11 mass, and sermon was quite interesting. There was a bit of a talk about the “may peace be with you” part of the service, and how this is a way for us to unburden our souls through forgiveness or reconciliation with those with whom we have grievances, but that this does not extend to terrorists who have it in their hearts to kill us. The gist is that would just be stupid, and god isn’t telling us to be airheads.

It was time to dress up for our third formal dinner. It was tuxedo time again for me, now that I have my white tuxedo shirt back from the laundry. Sharon dressed in a very attractive dress that her friend Lin gave her, and I had just the splash of color (a turquoise hankie for my coat pocket). My eyes got pretty big when I saw the menu, and I needed Sharon’s help to order both an appetizer and a soup. I tried the jumbo shrimp cocktail with spicy California sauce (the shrimp was great but the sauce needed much more horseradish) and courtesy of Sharon I enjoyed the seafood bruschetta, a grilled kabob with shrimp, salmon and halibut. Next I had the delicious pumpkin soup, and Sharon tried some of my brothy chicken and corn chowder. For the entry I had the Alaskan crab cakes (small and tasty) and I had some spinach and tortellini added (from a second entry). Sharon had the beef tenderloin, as did most of the people at our table. I had the cookies and cream cordial, and got a shot glass with just yellow in the base. This drink contained Kahlua, Irish crème and white chocolate liquor.

After dinner we stopped in the casino. It was approaching 8PM and we decided to skip the show and visit the casino. Sharon had some luck at the Winning Bid slot machine, winning $10, before moving onto video poker where she broke even. Meanwhile, I had some luck at the table and wound up winning about $50. When we finished, we went back to our room and called it a night.

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