Family Travel

The alarm goes off at 3:45am :-( We need to be at the ferry dock by 4:30 for our 5:30am ferry to Ketchikan. And we actually do arrive on time. We check in and have some muffins while waiting for the ferry.

The engineer tells us that we need to back on. We were hoping for an easy drive onto the ferry this morning, but I guess that’s not going to happen. So we back up the rig and turn around in the intersection next to the parking lot (very early, so no traffic). We have a little turn before we get to the ramp and Jere is frustrated with my instructions on which way to turn the rig. Luckily one of the attendants comes up to us and asks if we want help. Jere immediately says ‘Yes’ and I’m relegated to my normal duties of making sure he doesn’t run into anything.

We finally get down the ramp and the ferry is almost empty, so we just keep it parked by the door so we can pull right out at Ketchikan (that is the only good thing about backing onto the ferry).

It’s drizzling this morning, so we find a seat in the front lounge and relax. The scenery is foggy and we’re tired so we spend most of the ferry ride inside looking at the scenery or reading.

While we’re back in the cafeteria having breakfast (the Matanuska has good food; unlike the Taku), someone yells ‘whale’ and we all race to the window. There’s a small humpback whale fairly close to the ferry.

As we get close to Ketchikan, it’s getting brighter. We expected rain today, so this is a nice surprise.

We arrive at Ketchikan by Noon and are the first ones off the ferry. Our first stop is at the tire dealer. We had a blow out on one of our trailer tires near Destruction Bay and none of the tire dealers in Haines or Juneau had the size tire we needed. So we had a tire shipped from Oregon to Ketchikan about a week ago and it arrived in the container yesterday. There are 4 customers ahead of us, so we make some sandwiches and wait for our turn. It is actually sunny out, thankfully we don’t have too long a wait before we are on our way again.

We set up camp and cannot get our hitch undone. After about 30 minutes or so, we finally manage to get unhitched and set up. We walk down to the dock at the RV park and look around at the SUNSHINE AND BLUE SKIES!!!

We’re tired so we take a break, have a snack and then head out to explore Ketchikan. It normally is cloudy/rainy in Ketchikan (they average 155 inches/year of rain and it’s not unusual for Ketchikan to get 200+ inches) and the tire clerk said this is the first day it hasn’t been rainy since she’s been here this summer. SO….even though we’re very tired, we figure we better take advantage of the sunshine and do some sightseeing.

Our first stop is the Bight Totem State Park to see totem poles. Ketchikan has more totem poles than any other city in North America.

Then off to downtown Ketchikan to check out the town

and the Southeast Discovery Center. All of the state and national forest & park services went together to build one visitors’ center in town. It’s free with our national park pass and is very nicely done.

We also walk to Creek Street: Their picturesque and historic ‘red light’ district. The cruise ships have all left town, so the street is deserted.

We’re very tired, so we head back to the trailer for dinner and some TV. We haven’t had TV for the last week, so this is a nice change.

We wake up to rain. Unfortunately, it will rain all day. A steady, constant, sometimes heavy rain.

Our first stop is the post office and the campground office downtown to pay for our campsite. The campground is only 8 sites and there is no office at the campground itself. Then we visit Petersburg’s museum.

It was built 5 years ago and is surprisingly very well done. Surprising, because this is not a tourist town. No cruise ships stop here, not even small ones. We end up spending close to two hours there – yes, it’s that’s good (plus it’s raining). They have two well done movies and excellent exhibits.

We pick up a few groceries and then head back to the trailer for a late lunch. We’re hoping that the rain will slow down and we can go for a hike, but that is not to be. It continues to rain hard, so around 3:30 we decide to take off and drive south to the Tongass National Forest anyway. This would be a beautiful drive if it would clear up.

The road is gravel, but fairly well maintained. The views are great. We try to do what the area residents do and just ignore the rain and continue on with whatever is planned,

but after awhile we say ‘enough’ and return to the trailer.

On the way back we stop by the road and watch a small troller bring in his catch. We’ve seen several of the small boats today trolling for salmon. The fisherman lets out a line (maybe 100 feet) with floats on. Attached to the line are lots of individual fish lines with lures on the end. At the end of the day, they bring the line in and detach each salmon individually (after bopping it with a stick to knock it out). They use this technique to catch their premium salmon. So they throw back the fish they don't want (the fish are still alive and will be fine when they're thrown back, in case you were concerned about throwing 'dead' fish back into the water):

We also stop to take a picture of an eagle sitting on a pile of rocks that someone must have built. It’s still raining so the pic is not great.

It rains the rest of the evening so we spend the evening inside packing for tomorrow’s ferry ride and watching a DVD. There's a nice view of the harbor and some crabbing pots on one side of our RV, but here is the view we get from our dining room table. Not very picturesque, but very representative of many parts of small fishing towns in Alaska.

We don’t need to be to the ferry til 10am. So we take our time getting ready, including having my coffee outside looking at the fishing boats on the Wrangell Narrows. Then we drive to the ferry where we spend time talking to some other RVers who rode with us on the ferry to Petersburg. I also take a few pictures of the area, including a picture of a tugboat pulling a barge full of containers. Very picturesque morning.

The Taku engineer says we need to back on the ferry again. Only this time we need to back onto a long curved ramp (with a very low flimsy guardrail, in my opinion). It takes awhile with at least 4 attempts before we can get around the curve in the ramp.

This is by the far the longest ferry ramp in Alaska. The ferry is almost empty so we can leave the rig parked at the door and then drive right off when we get to Wrangell.

We walk up to the top of the ferry and discuss the ferry ramp – we wonder why they couldn’t have made this ramp differently. And I thought the steep ramp at Haines was challenging :-)

We have a short 3 hour ferry ride to Wrangell today, so we find a seat and enjoy the ride. I take one last picture of Petersburg.

Several miles from the dock we pass the Matanuska ferry:

Shortly after passing the ferry we pass a fishing lodge, where they have several halibut hanging. The one is over 200 pounds!

The Wrangell Narrows is the most dangerous part of the Alaska Marine Highway. The have a watchman posted at the front of the ferry to watch for other boats and any other hazards.

Views of Wrangell from the ferry:

We get to Wrangell and the attendant there looks at our rig and says "I bet that was fun getting on at Petersburg". We just smile. The drive off the ferry is an easy drive off.

We check out a campground near the small boat harbor that is supposed to have a nice view. Well, there are lots of trees, so no view for the campsites we can fit in. Plus the campsites are not very level and it’s $25/night for electric only. We head back to town for the ‘parking lot’ RV park with the level sites, full hookups, and free wifi for $32/night. After setting up we head to check out downtown Wrangell. It’s Sunday, so everything’s closed.

We look at the dock area and inquire about a tour to go see the nearby Anon Bear sanctuary. It’s $207/person! Times 3 is $621, so that’s not going to happen. On the ferry ride to Sitka we met a family of 3 from Homer, Alaska who were planning to do this; but too $$$ for us.

So we drive over to Petroglyph Beach and look for the petroglyphs. There are quite a few and a lot easier to find than at Sandy Beach near Petersburg.

Then we drive to the end of the good road, where we see a No Trespassing sign that is quite detailed.

Our planned last stop today is at Shaker Island to view Tlingit totems and a clan house.

As we’re driving back to the 5ver we notice a ferry in port. So we go look to see what ferry is in port (the Columbia) and check out the gift shop that is open for the ferry. There are also several kids at the dock selling garnets. They get around $20 and up for the garnets that are imbedded in some sort of rock. We later find out that the garnets are found on land owned by a local Boy Scout troop. Only kids are allowed to dig for the garnets.

We go back to the trailer for dinner. After dinner Jere and I take a walk to the new wharf area. Our walk is cut short when it starts to rain. So we head back to trailer and call it a day.

We wake to rain again, but it stops by the time we're ready to drive into Petersburg. Our first stop is the museum.

We watch their interesting 30-minute movie on the history of Petersburg and look around their small museum.

The 3rd grade teacher in town had her students write a journal about themselves and their heritage, so I read a few of them and leave a note for one of the little girls saying how much I enjoyed her journal. They are really well done for 3rd graders.

Then we park by the dock area and walk around downtown Petersburg.

We first stop at the Sons of Norway area and read about their Norwegian founder/heritage.

There are lots of fishing boats in this town.

Then we walk along the main street and do some window-shopping. Petersburg was founded by a Norwegian, so several of the stores are decorated with Norwegian artwork. Even some of the sidewalks have the Norwegian inspired designs.

All of the windows have quilts displayed, so I am thrilled to look at quilts. They apparently have quilting camp here each summer. I joke with Jere that we need to come back next summer so I can attend quilting camp. The town has dozens of quilts displayed from “Quilt Camp 2007”.

We look for a place for lunch, but the only restaurant we find in town that meets Jere & Joe’s approval is filled with cruise passengers. Petersburg gets 2-3 small cruises in here each week. The cruise boats are small, with less than a 100 tourists/boat.

So we return to the trailer for lunch and it is pouring rain. After lunch we head south for a drive. We pass several sitka pygmy black-tailed deer along the road.

They’re not bothered by our loud diesel and keep on eating when we pass. It stops raining so we get out to take a walk on a nature trail. It's through a muskeg meadow to a salmon creek. While we’re watching the salmon and fishermen at the creek, a black bear comes out to the riverbank about 50 yards downstream, so we watch the bear for awhile.

The one section of road has graffiti painted on it. The graffiti continues for around 1000 feet. I'm not sure if I've ever seen graffiti painted on blacktop.

We stop by the trailer for a snack and then drive to the other side of town and do some beach-combing at low tide.

There’s a lot of sea glass on the beach, so we gather some sea glass as a souvenir.

After walking on the beach for awhile we head down the road to Sandy Beach Park. They have very unusual picnic tables:

It’s not very sandy at Sandy Beach, but we walk out through the mud and mussels to look at some petroglyphs that are supposed to be out on the rocks. We find a few and then head back to the truck – it’s raining again.

We make one more stop (in the rain), where there's a covered viewpoint, Whale Point.

There are icebergs in the strait from the LeConte glacier, so we look at them through the binoculars for awhile. They're really pretty. Then head back to the trailer for dinner (and lots more rain!).

It's raining when the alarm rings at 5:45am, but we're getting used to the rain by now. Also, we expected rain in this part of Alaska. No need to call the ferry office today to see if the ferry's on time: we can see the ferry (Matanuska) from our campground:

By the time we're ready to drive over to the ferry around 7:30, the rain stops....well, actually it only stops for about an hour and starts up again right before we load onto the ferry. This ferry ramp doesn't look too steep, so that is good. We wait for our turn

and then drive onto the ferry as directed. The attendant tells us to go down the ramp, taking it slow. So we start driving slowly down the ramp.

OOPS! The guys at the bottom of the ramp start yelling and waving at us to stop. So we stop halfway down the ramp and the engineer apologizes to us -- we need to go back...they need to get a boat on the ferry before us.

Well, that may not be a big deal (to back up a ferry ramp) if you're a car, but we're 52 feet long and Jere can't see back past the top of the ramp AND NONE OF THE ATTENDANTS ARE HELPING HIM BACK UP THE RAMP! When I realize that no one is directing him, I ask if I should get out and he says 'yes' immediately. So I run to the back of the trailer and give him directions. He knows there's a pole on the left side near the top of the ramp, so he tries to get the 5ver to turn a little to miss the pole. Finally the attendant in the ferry office realizes that no one is helping us and runs over to help. THANK GOODNESS! Jere finally manages to get up the ramp and out of the way, with the attendant's help. This is NOT fun. This is also not typical when getting off/on a ferry. We normally get lots of help and it can be a little stressful, but not near so frustrating as this morning.

They drive the boat onto the ferry and then we get to drive down the ramp again.

By this time we're a little stressed and concerned, but they get us on the ferry and parked. They again apologize for putting us through that. We're just glad that's over. This should have been an easy ferry load...oh well.

We "set sail" for Petersburg and I take a quick snapshot of our campground.

It's a sportsmen club parking lot right next to the ferry. Very convenient. Not real picturesque, but we basically just slept there two nights and spent the daylight hours touring.

The day turns out pretty nice weatherwise. The rain stops soon after leaving Sitka and we enjoy the next few hours watching the view, including more jumping salmon.

As we're traveling past some islands, the captain announces that some "rare northern flamingos" have been spotted in the tree around the next bend. His announcement sounds official, like it's a real and rare event. So we get to the end of the island and sure enough there are about a dozen plastic pink flamingoes perched in a very tall spruce tree. Someone has quite a sense of humor.

The ferry shows several movies during the day, much to Joe's enjoyment. Joe and I watch a movie in the early afternoon; Jere watches a movie with Joe in the late afternoon. It's a 12 hour ride on the ferry today, but it goes quickly between the scenery, whale-watching and movies.

We also pass the Malaspina ferry, that we took between Haines and Juneau:

We even have several flyovers by a Coast Guard helicopter. There are 4 "armed" U.S. Coast Guardsmen on our ferry today, so maybe the flyover is connected to them. But it gives us something else interesting to watch on the ferry. Of course we also have the ferry's "man overboard" drill to entertain us.

When we enter Frederick Sound, we see several whales. I'm looking through the binoculars and I see a group of humpbacks rise out of the water together. They are bubble net feeding! I am thrilled and quickly hand the binoculars to Joe to see. They're far away, so no pics; but being far away I can see them come up to the surface to feed several times from the ferry. An incredible site. Joe is a 'too cool' 12-year-old to be as excited as I am. I remember being the same way in my early teens. Hopefully he'll learn to appreciate the little things in life as he gets older.

We have one stop between Sitka and Petersburg. The ferry stops for about 45 minutes at the town of Take, a small tribul community on one of the islands.

It's a small fishing village and it's claim to fame is the tallest totem pole in North America.

Amazingly, when we dock at Take, the sun comes out for about about 15 minutes -- everyone comes out on deck to soak up the sun. I'm just happy when it's not raining; sunshine is a really special treat :-)

As we get close to Petersburg, the captain announces that icebergs can be seen far off the port side of the ferry. They're from the LeConte Glacier, south of Petersburg. A very pretty blue color.

We dock at Petersburg around 9pm.

We again get to back up inside the ferry in order to drive off. And again the back few feet of our trailer extend out the side of the ferry as we back up to turn. Jere goes very slowly and the attendant yells at him to keep going "I promise to not let her fall out" :-)

The ramp is long and curved, but it is an easy drive off.

We take off to the campground, Twin Creek RV Park. We had called yesterday to make sure they had a site available and it turns out that we are one of only 2 RVers at the campground tonight.

We set up in the dark (missing that midnight sun that we had in northern Alaska) and then check our email. We have free wifi here -- a nice surprise.