Day 4: Tripping on the Alaska Marine Ferry to the Aleutian Islands

King Cove, Cold Bay and False Pass

We were about to enter the most cloudy place in America.

We awoke at 6 am to a ceiling of thick clouds moving on the back of a steady wind. The sky, land and water melded into a palette of blues and grays.

We were some 650 miles from Anchorage on the Alaska Peninsula, headed to a town that, like its neighbors, is accessible only by boat or air. There are some 70 volcanoes in the region and King Cove sits between two of them, its green folds creating the backdrop for the fishing town. The steep valley also creates a tunnel for pounding storms to hammer through, giving it a well-deserved reputation for rough weather.

The skies here looked threatening as we lined up to get off the Tustumena ferry to have a first-hand look.

Approaching King Cove, Alaska.

Like many tiny settlements in the Aleutian Islands and lower Alaska Peninsula, King Cove has been transformed by a fish cannery that, in 1911, set up operations on the shore. Its early operators included Europeans who married women of Unangan (Aleut) descent and workers from Asia. Today, the Peter Pan Seafood operation in King Cove is the largest salmon processing facility in Alaska, hiring as…