King Cove Rules!

I am in the Aleutians and I LOVE it! King Cove, to be exact. It’s on the Aleutian Island chain in Alaska. You know…that chain of islands that comes off the bottom of the state and stretches west over the ocean all the way t0 Russia.

There is SO much to tell! But I’ll have to do it in bits--otherwise, this single entry would turn into a book.

It took 4 ½ days of travel to get here. (This included a 2 day / 3 night ferry trip, which was adventure in itself. But I’ll tell you all about it in a later blog.)

My husband had been here for about a month already, and kept raving about it. I was only half believing him. The ferry docked at King Cove when it was still dark as tar outside. But when the sun came up...Wow! What a place!

Here are the highlights:

There is a stream about 1 ½ miles from our place, and there is so much salmon running up it that it looks like the water is boiling. The salmon swim UP stream to get to where they are going to spawn. Determined little things. Swimming upstream is bad enough—but to try it with a crowd would really get on my nerves. If I were a salmon, I would seriously look for a nice little spot downstream to lay my eggs. A little shade, a little shelter, and I'd be in business.

We have our own active volcano. Actually, in this part of the country, it isn’t all that impressive. I’ve been told that there are more active volcanoes in our little stretch of islands than anywhere on earth. We are part of the Ring of Fire.

And the island is green! Everywhere! There aren’t many trees around…probably because of the severe winds that come through here. They are mostly shrubs, bushes, and mossy spongy ground cover. But what we’ve got is dense greenery.

I got here exactly a week ago, and every day we've gone exploring. It is great!

We went berry picking, catching salmon (with bare hands…bear style), and went as far as the roads would take us.

Here is what I know so far:
- There is a LOT to do here!
- Spawning fish are CRAZY!
- There are a lot of bears...Kodiaks.
- The berries are huge, seedy, and S-W-E-E-T!
- It rains a ton.
- I’m going to like it here!

All of that will have to wait for later blogs. For now, here are some snapshots of our new home.

 Yup...it is B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L here!

 ...and more beauty!

 The view out our window. 

Notice the trail coming down the mountain between the buildings? 

It's a BEAR trail. 

You know how deer will create a trail in the woods that they follow? 

Well, this one was created by Kodiak bears.

This is a closeup of the bear trail.

 The other part of the view out our window.

This is a fresh water lake. In the background, you can barely see the bottom part of the volcano.

Life is good.

More to follow.