20230927 AAAA Trip - Dutch Harbor, Unalaska, Alaska - Dutch isn't much but the wildlife made up for it

2023 Alaska, Asia, Australia, Arabian Peninsula Trip 
Day 12/105 - Dutch Harbor, Unalaska, Alaska - wild Alaska

Today, we have our final stop in Alaska - Dutch Harbor in Unalaska, Alaska.  Confused?  Unalaska is both an island and a town in Alaska and the harbor here is Dutch Harbor.  It was named by Captain Cook who saw a Dutch sailing ship in the harbor, avoided creativity, and named it Dutch Harbor.

If you are a fan of The Discovery Channel's Emmy-winning Deadliest Catch TV show, then Dutch Harbor should sound familiar as it is filmed here.  Dutch Harbor is the #1 commercial fishing port in the country in terms of volume.  That's pretty amazing for a place that sits 800 miles from the nearest hospital.  That would be in Anchorage which is 3 to 3.5 hours away by air.  Dutch Harbor is farther south than Ketchikan and farther west than Hawaii.

There was exactly one excursion available today - Dutch Harbor on your own.  That should give you a sense of how "not big" this place is.  The plan was to ride tour buses to see the highlights.  There were several stops where you could get off and explore.

Wait, did I say "tour bus"?  This was our tour bus.

Well, not just that one - one more as well.  Let's do the math here. 700 passengers, three 48-passenger school buses.  That equals...a ton of trips and a lot, seriously a lot of waiting.  This isn't what you would call a tourist Mecca.

Still, Dutch Harbor has some charm.  The folks here are a tough bunch but in a good way. We were on an early tour so one of the stops in town near the Russian Orthodox church that didn't open until 11 a.m. wasn't available.  Our first stop was the Museum of the Aleutians.

Inside, we saw displays of life in the area, including kayaking and wearing waterproof clothing made from sea mammal esophagus and gut. Eww...

We walked to the next stop, the Grand Aleutian Hotel. It was described as initially a 5-star hotel with a dinner dress code, but that didn't fly here where people are more practical.  They had tables set up with wares from local artisans for purchase.

The real action was outside.  Arlona walked down to the water to take a look.  Yes, she touched it.

When she was there, she noticed that there were starfish all over the place.  They were all different colors and really cool.

The other prevalent thing was the eagles.  There were bald eagles everywhere.  We saw multiple pairs on roofs, light poles, shipping containers – everywhere.

I mentioned The Deadliest Catch. Here are some of the crab pots that they use to snag the king crab.

There is a bar made famous on the show – The Norwegian Rat.  It was right across the street from the Grand Aleutian Hotel so we walked over for a photo op. 

The scenery around the area was nice and very Alaska-like.

We were finally able to catch a bus to the next stop at the World War II Museum.  Dutch Harbor shares an experience with Pearl Harbor – the only two US territories that were bombed by the Japanese.

The museum had many artifacts from that period including this radio that was very well preserved.

We were ready for a bus to take us back to the ship.  But, with only three 48-passenger buses running, it quickly became apparent that none were coming anytime soon.  We decided to hoof it the roughly 1.5 miles back to the ship and take in the sights along the way.

Looking down the runway of the airport – they close the road with railroad crossing arms when aircraft are taking off or landing

We walked past tons of refrigerated shipping containers that are used to transport the millions of pounds of fish that go through Dutch Harbor

We heard a beautiful bird song and found this little guy producing the melody.  Google says it is a Melospiza or song sparrow.

As we continued our walk to the ship, we heard a loud guttural growl in the distance.  This group of Stellar sea lions was resting on a platform, and making noise for whoever wanted to listen.

We spotted a large group of what appeared to be mergansers swimming near the ship.

This otter was enjoying a meal.  It had a couple shells in its chest.  It would take one shell and bang it against the other to open it and then enjoy the tasty morsel inside.

We got back to the ship as two tour buses were unloading, so we made the right choice to walk rather than just wait for the bus.

We enjoyed lunch and then spent some time in the hot tub, nursing the abuse I put my bum knee through today.  As we sailed out, the sea lions were still there to bid us a fond farewell.

We went to the Explorers’ Bar for a cocktail and to watch the sail-out.  All of a sudden, the bartenders, Algie and Niti pointed outside and said, “Whales!”.

We went outside and enjoyed about an hour of watching tons of humpback whales in the bay as we sailed out.  Sorry for the large photo dump, but whales are cool.

The birds were enjoying all the critters the whale disturbed.

Waving at us

After we passed the whales, there were additional disturbances in the water.  We passed a huge pod of dolphins.  I couldn’t tell which species as they barely breached the surface, but we could see below the surface that they had white stripes.

It made for a very memorable sail-out.  We are now on our seven-day stretch of sea days en route to Sapporo, Japan.  We start our time travels by going back another hour tonight.  The big change will happen in the next couple of days when we cross the international dateline.