Tustumena – Homer to Dutch – 4 nights Aug 21-25

This is a trip out the Aleutian Island chain off the end of the Alaska peninsula, as far as you can go by ferry. The ferry only visits once or twice a month. We got off back in Kodiak, where we walked a bit and spent the afternoon at the Chowder House, a café on the water (“drive or float by”). One of the places we got off the boat was a little fishing village called Chignik. Pop about 60. The major draw was a bakery that happened to be open! There was also a greeter dog that led me to the Chignik Variety Store, a small room in a local ladies’ house. There was a naturalist aboard the Tustumena, doing programs about birds and whales, and Aleutian Islands history. Our names were both drawn to go to Izembek National Wildlife Refuge while the ferry was at Cold Bay, pop 80ish mostly government folks. We were lucky to be 2 of the 15 who got to go.  We saw pigeon guillemots, puffins, and hundreds of black brants (small geese the size of mallards, hundreds of thousands of which stop at Cold Bay in the saltwater lagoon there to fatten up on their fall migration). We could see one of the local volcanoes from here. (We did not see Pavlof, which is currently very active, since we passed it about 4 am on the ferry.) We left the ferry at Dutch Harbor.