Kodiak wasn’t very welcoming (yet). Overcast sky still hid the green beauty of the so called emerald island. After we arrived, we wanted to book a bear watching tour as soon as possible. A quick visit at the seaplane port proved to be the right thing after several emails to a couple of companies days before. Andrew Airways seemed to be professional and were able to provide our additional requests.
The rest of the day, we drove around for a bit to get to know the island. At Buskin River State Park we then found a nice campground. It even had a shelter for us to barbeque a tender loin and eat while it was raining. The rest of the evening could have been relaxing, if it wasn’t for the following 3 things:
- It was cold and wet
- It was Saturday (and we always wanted to hit a bar during a weekend)
- We just figured out, that for some reason our fuel cap was missing
So at 9:30 pm we decided to pack everything up again and drive back to Kodiak for Walmart and later on the way back to hit a bar before returning to the campground. Long story short: We found actually a fitting tank cap and a replacement bulb (for our back light, that also stopped working) for our Jeep in Walmart late night and had a good time in two rather empty bars! Happy ending!
Next day, we had one more “free” day to spend before our bear watching tour. We decided to drive down a road down south to Fossil Beach (where roads ended as well). We came across a surfer beach with actual people surfing the waves as it would be Venice Beach. On our way to Fossil Beach, we also passed through a private spaceport, apparently used for testing defense missiles.
Fossil Besch itself hadn’t too much to offer besides nice cliffs, green flower grasslands and old bunker remnants from WWII (the US was afraid of an invasion of Japanese troops in Alaska). Fortunately in the meantime, the weather got really nice!
In the evening we headed for an other state park campground called Fort Abercrombie. This as well is an area situated on a former WWII site with watch bunkers, shelters for search lights and anti-ship guns. After dinner we quickly walked some trails along the coast to capture the sunset – at around 11:30 pm!
