Capturing the Moment

  I had Christian put me onshore here to get this picture while standing in a natural rock arch. This visit to the Alaskan Native town of Akutan, out in the Aleutian Islands, was very unique. We had very nice weather conditions, and I had touched base with April, who is the head of the Akutan Native Village Corp. She told us that she wouldn't be there, but the general store should be open. She also mentioned that the museum hadn't been opened for many years. The town itself only has about sixty-nine permanent residents. All the houses are connected by a boardwalk. The locals use four wheeler ATV's to ride up and down on the boardwalk. I even ran into my friend Mark, who makes traditional skin wooden kayaks, who was in the village replacing all the windows. It was my first time going inside the store, as the only other time I walked town it was a weekend so the store was closed. My group was ready to help the local economy by buying hats, snacks, and some energy drinks. Ther...

  I really liked how this picture came out. The large circle in the foreground in the mount for a huge Panama gun. It could fire on just about anything that could be seen, out to the horizon in the water. The command bunker behind was where they would do the calculations to figure out where to point the gun. Our hiking group can be seen walking the ridgeline up to the bunker at the top. We made it all the way to our Aleutian Islands! Dutch Harbor, the home of the 'Deadliest Catch' show, was our destination. It took us 10 days to get here, through a lot of unprotected open ocean traveling. We did have a sturdy boat, the Safari Explorer, which is an expedition style ship. But what we really lucked out with was the weather! It was sunny the whole time. It was calm enough to paddle offshore with whales. We had to put sunscreen out on the back table and remind people about bring sunglasses on activities. I just hope that I didn't use up all the good weather for the rest of the s...