Adventures in Paradise

Last Gas Station for 2,000 Miles

Yesterday was our last fueling at sea not only for this exercise, but for the summer - we'll get underway briefly in July to go unload our ammunition and then we enter the shipyard. We won't be out until mid-October, so there will be no lovely ocean pictures for a while, just an idea of what it's like to live and work in an (even more) industrial environment. Don't worry, there's lots of beauty and wonder there as well, you just have to work harder to find it. 

Anyway, we've declared victory and are headed south...in the next few days there might even be a real sunset in the sky!

Coast Guard

A great service, assisting mariners in distress is just what they do - and do well.

Real World

Taking a break from the liberty pictures to show you some of what I'm doing here in the frozen north.

Doing some shiphandling training with USS LAKE ERIE

And with USCGC BERTHOLF...

And here, sending someone ashore with a little help from our Coast Guard friends.

Some Animals

With our serious bandwidth limitations, I can really only upload a few pictures at a time, and those have to be small. Fortunately, I have some smaller file sizes, so that's what I'll share first.

Puffin! There were lots of them, but they all had their backs turned to us.

Saw this guy from the bridge wing as we pulled in. I have more pictures from different angles but the otters are pretty much all adorable from every angle.

A family of bears - most of the ones we saw were at a distance, which wasn't great for photographs, but did give a great sense of scale.

 

North to Alaska

I've been singing that one line to that old song for something like three weeks. Also, I've been singing it wrong my entire life. I always thought the line was "Go north to Alaska, go north, the west is won" because the Gold Rush in Alaska followed the ones out west and because so many westerners continued north, like Wyatt Earp. Anyway, the lyric is actually "...the rush is on."  No reference at all to the winning of the American West.  Not that there is any point to this other than that my ear worms tend to be very specific to the circumstances, I don't know any other songs about Alaska and I can't get the darn thing out of my head.

This, on the other hand, is the pointy end of my ship headed into Kachemak Bay. This is June, but my guys were dressed for December.

It was pretty apparent walking and driving around town which were my Sailors and which people were locals - my guys were not the ones in shorts and flip flops! It wasn't so bad when the sun was out, or at least when the sun wasn't obscured by the clouds.

I have lots to say about Alaska...the views, the people I met and played with, the food I ate, the animals I saw (Clint's comment in the last blog post will give you an idea, but one incident involves a charging bear) and lots of other stuff.  So, as usual, I will cut it up into small bits and then add a BIG folder of photos to the sidebar.  And yes, I am indeed a poster child for the old "Join the Navy, See the World" slogan - and I love every second!

Photos From Friday

Here’s a link to photos of the lovely Hallo Bay Bear
watching folks that hosted a couple of us for a tour on Friday. It was an
amazing experience and as soon as I’ve processed my photos, I’ll be
posting them. In the meantime, enjoy these. (And notice the three little brown
bumps in the background of the third photo – you’ll be seeing much
closer shots of them soon.)
 

http://bearsathallobay.blogspot.com/2011/06/wildlife-viewing-to-uss-decatur-friends.html

And seriously, if you ever go to Alaska, go to Homer and go out with these
guys. They were wonderful from start to finish.

Web Cam

http://www.hallobay.com/Web_Cam.htm

If you follow this link today (it’s 1016 Alaska Time
on Sunday as I post this, so 1116 Pacific and 1416 Eastern) you can watch us
get underway and head to sea. We leave at noon our time (so 4pm eastern, 1pm
Pacific). The camera updates every 30 seconds.

Yup

I found yarn in Alaska. Hand spun wool, hand dyed chenille. Icy colors, of course.

Sent from my iPhone

COLD!

We’re somewhere around 56 degrees North latitude and
headed still further north. It’s COLD! Those hats you sent at Christmas
are still getting a workout for us on the ship, even in June!

Deck Crew

A photo of me with the bulk of my Deck Crew – the young
ones who do the bulk of the topside painting and preservation of the ship, and
all of the rigging for the Underway Replenishments that you have seen pictures
of for the last few months. The Command Master Chief and I were down on the
paint float to put the first brushstrokes of gold on the anchor in recognition
of DECATUR
winning the Golden Anchor Award for Retention Excellence. (Yes, I know –
with this economy, retaining people in the Navy sounds easy, and it is, but the
Golden Anchor award has a few other requirements that mean it’s actually
tough to get.)
 
Aren’t they a great looking bunch?