Alaksa - 'Northern Edge'

Well, we just finished our 3 1/2 week trek to Alaska for Northern Edge - a joint Army, Air Force, Navy excercise. We pulled into a small fishing town called Homer. It actually turned out to be a pretty cool little town, tons of fishermen. I think the population was about 5,000. Alaska was quite a change from Hawaii, water temp dropped to 45 degrees plus a wicked wind chill. It is also daylight in Alaska for about 22 hours out of the day.

A bunch of us sonar techs also decided to grow mustaches for our trek. I was the only one that kept it the entire time, you might notice a strange fuzzy thing above my lip in the pictures.

We did a few things underway: whale watching, helo operations on the flight deck, gun qualifications in the freezing cold and we also got a fly-over by the new F-22 Raptor on the last day of the Air Force excercise. All in all it was a good trip.

En route Hawaii, Pizza Night

Every Saturday underway we have pizza night. The cooks take the night off and one of the departments on the ship invades the galley and makes pizza for dinner. It was Combat Systems making the pizza this night, always with the disco tunes blasting. You would dance like this if you were underway.
We make some pretty serious pizza, way too much cheese and meat. They make some so dangerous they warrant nicknames like "the Heart Attack" and "Cholesterol Attack."

Alaska - "Northern Edge"

On one of the days during the exercise off the coast we heard a huge pod of killer whales on sonar (which is common). We usually wouldn't mind but since we weren't actually in transit anywhere they stopped the ship and we went topside and went whale watching. They were a ways off so the quality isn't that hot.
This is on the foc'sle of the ship, behind the 5" gun. It was about 2am when I took this picture, about as dark as it got.
Hard at work during a sonar exercise.

Alaska

Across the harbor, the far edge of a massive glacier.

Plenty of sea gulls.
Pulling out of Alaska.

Alaska

Homer is a big fishing town, tons of crab fishermen. For those fans of the Discover Channel show 'Deadliest Catch,' here I am in front of a stack of crab pods. One of the boats on the show was pulled into Homer while we were there.
A shot of the harbor from the tiny town. If you look closely you can see the O-Kane moored in the harbor in the distance.
The fishing docks, at 10:30pm.
Fishing docks.

Alaska

Sonar people, on the flight deck as we pull into the harbor.
Gun quals on the flight en route to Alaska. The water was 45 degrees and the wind was blowing upwards of 25 knots, definitely not Hawaii.

Pulling into Homer with the ship's Battle Flag hoisted behind the ensign.