Day Five

Petersburg is a small fishing town of 3000. There are a few stores along the main drag. We visited the museum in town and the visitor's center. The people are friendly. Petersburg was founded by the Norwegians. 

There was a picture of the largest halibut - 125 pounds. We got to see the tide at its lowest and see it come in. The boats were varied and fun to watch going about their work. 

We took an amazing tour with Sal out to the farthest south point of Mitka where we could see Wrangell. Sal is a retired nuclear physicist who was also a patent issuer for the federal government. He lives in Virginia during the winter and lives in Alaska with his mine claim during the summer. Somehow the claim is a tax write off. 

We had the unique opportunity to surface mine for garnets. It involved hammering on rocks "for as long as you want."  It was a 45 minute ride through Alaskan wilderness on a gravel road. We were glad that we brought a granola bar. 

For 125 bucks we chiseled out a nice handful of garnets. They say there's one born every day. Today there were two.

A friendly place. 

Day Four

There is no water system when you get outside of downtown Ketchikan. People have to collect rainwater in big tanks. There are downspouts going into the rain barrels. It was amazing.

When we caught the shuttle from our hotel to go downtown, our shuttle driver told us some very interesting things. When he was young boy the only way in and out of Ketchikan was on a  plane that took off of land and landed on water.     The water would spray inside the open door, and he would yell, "Mama were going to die!"  His mom would get mad at him and tell him not to do it, but he told her he did it just to make people scared.

Ketchikan was a logging and fishing town when our driver was a young boy. Many of the buildings were built out over the water. When the tide was low, he would go underneath the bars and pick up all of the money that the men dropped while they were in the bars. He said he could get $20 easily in the day.

We went to a fish ladder on Creek Street and saw the salmon going up a waterfall it was very interesting and they were about 2 feet long. 

We went to the totem heritage Center, which is a museum that was informative about the building of totem poles and the native people who built them. 

We went to a sweater shop and it seems like most of the people have the same opinion about Petersburg. She said that when you get off the boat you must have a square head, like the Norwegians

We shopped around downtown and went through a very pretty park and into a bookstore where Garth  bought a book for our 9 1/2 hour ferry ride to Petersburg.  

On a Vietnam war memorial I read "for your tomorrow we gave our today." I thought that was applicable for many situations.

We navigated the Wrangell Narrows on our way to Petersburg. When the expression is made, "All hands on deck!" I now understand the meaning. It was very narrow and the ferry made its progress slowly through the markers. There were some very attentive passengers, the Smiths included. 

Day Three

The first thing we did was go out to the street and catch "the bus. " This time it worked out well. We got on and the bus driver dropped us off at Ward Street. We then walked up and found the trail that took us to Ward Lake.  We walked all the way around the lake, about a mile and a half. Then we hiked to Perseverance Lake, another 2 1/2 miles. 

We ate blueberries and salmon berries along the way.

There were lots of beautiful flowers and ferms because we were in the Tongass National Forest rain forest.

After the hike we went back out to the road and caught "The Bus."  It took us to the end of the bus line which was at Totem Bight National Park. A bight is a place on the coastline that goes in where people made settlements because there was less wind and weather. There were lots of totem poles with informative descriptions. 

We picked up our bags at the Black Bear Inn and walked to Walmart to catch either a bus or shuttle. That was a big mistake because we got on the Walmart shuttle and it took us to the south end of downtown. Our hotel is on the north end of downtown so we had to call the Best Western shuttle so they could bring us where we need to be. 

Day Two

The first thing in the morning I rolled over and looked out the window, and there was the ocean.  

We got up and went out to the street to catch "The Bus."  Turns out the bus goes through all the neighborhoods on the way to downtown, so it took us a long time to get downtown to try to find the location for our sea kayaking tour. We made it.

It was a pretty big deal to just get into the kayaks and receive our beginners instruction to kayaking but we made it out of the harbor and up Creek Street where we saw seals playing in the water and they would come very close to our sea kayak.  There were four kayaks in our group and we went across the ocean to a little island, up along the coastline.  There were two people in each kayak and I was the captain and did the steering for our kayak. We did a lot of zigging and zagging.

We saw a magnificent bald eagle up in a tree, schools of herring right under our kayak, and a mother deer and her two fawn. 

We were pretty tired after the kayaking, so we went to the Tongass Museum in downtown Ketchikan.  It was near Creek street which was an area of Ketchikan that was the red light district in 1903.  The city Council ordered the bordellos to move across the creek from the townsite.  Now there are a lot of unique shops.  

We went to the Burger Queen fast food place for a halibut sandwich, the best thing we've eaten on the trip so far.

We went to the Discovery Center, operated by the forest service that was informative about Tongass National Forest, its wildlife and geography.

The great Alaskan lumberjack show was an outdoor show with lumberjacks throwing axes and using chainsaws to entertain the audience.

The local movie theater was showing Despicable Me 2, so we went to that.  A great discovery that saved us a lot of time was the free Walmart shuttle that took us from the docks where the cruise ships were back to our hotel which is near Walmart.