Long Island is off the Beaten Path....... and other Long Island, AK Off The Beaten Path Tips

If you make it to Long Island you either are a very adventurous traveler or live in Kodiak or the other possibility is that you were stationed at Fort Tidball during World War II and you want to revisit. My photo only shows about half the length of the island. The island is about 6 miles long. The best place to land on the island is in Cook Bay. There is a nice gradual gravel beach that is quite safe to land on.

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Well this isn't really off the beaten path once you arrived on Long Island...But there are many old roads that are really just paths now that connect all of the Quonset Huts and Bunkers. If you go, bring a good flashlight...something I didn't bring!! It makes for better fun exploring the dark inner hallways of the bunkers.

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Here you can see the water pipes that the men used for showering. These would have been installed somewhere around 1941 or 1942. I didn't see if the water was still running or not.

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There are still electrical boxes and other bits of conduit nailed to the concrete walls in the bunkers.The are all rusty now indicating moisture and time are taking its toll on them. I sure wish there were some lights in there now....Actually I wish that I would have remembered my flashlight!!

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Here is my friends dog Sienna standing sentry at the entrance to the ammunitions bunker. We went inside...but there isn't much left here...Just memories. At one time there would have been stockpiles of 6-inch rounds for the M1903A2 gun!!

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I don't know what this half-cyndrical wooden floored thing would have been used for...we couldn't see to the end of it and it wasn't very high...I couldn't stand upright in it. It was covered in earth and sort of built into a hillside. Maybe a secret tunnel entrance??

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It was one of the most amazing climbs that I've ever seen a Sitka Black-tailed deer do. If you enlarge the photo you can see just how steep this cliff is. We watched a deer climb this right in front of our eyes! It's so awesome to watch wildlife in their own habitat. As he got near the top he realized he was being watched and he ran off into the forrest.
He must've been down on the beach eating the kelp that washes ashore with each high tide.
Another amazing fact is that is the only deer we saw that day (although plenty tracks and scat)......but anyways the name of the point we were standing on was Deer Point!
The deer here are amazing animals as the mainland of Kodiak Island is about 7 miles away and the only way for the deer to get here is to swim!! I have never seen them swimming but some of my friends that are commercial fisherman have told me stories about spotting swimming deer several miles off shore!!
Sorry!! I was awestruck and forgot to take my camera out and take a photo...it was only after he was running into the forest that I thought to take my camera out!!

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I would love to return to explore Vera Bay a little bit more. I love the rock formations that have broken away from the island and have fallen off into the sea. Maybe a summer visit would be nice too. Then I could swim in the cool (cold) waters of the North Pacific.

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