USA

We pack up and leave the Rough Rider Campground in Minot, North Dakota.

We drive across North Dakota today. We pass lots and lots of farming combines, as well as fields of corn and sunflowers.

Another nice day so we have a picnic lunch at a roadside rest again. We also drive by the world’s largest buffalo statue :-)

So now in the last 3 days we've seen the world's largest moose, largest teepee and largest buffalo :-)

We get to the Fargo KOA in mid-afternoon and immediately head to the pool for a quick dip. The air is a little cool, but the water is warm. We meet a mother and daughter from Manitoba and they tell us about a steak buffet where they plan to have dinner. We decide to try it too: The North American Steak Buffet. All you can eat, including steak and salmon, drinks and dessert for $10.19. What a bargain and the food is very good. After the high food prices in Alaska, where a burger alone costs $10, this is a great deal for us.

After dinner we drive over to the Roger Maris Museum. It's a small museum, which is free, that is part of a nice mall. Apparently Roger Maris grew up Fargo, North Dakota. For the non-baseball fans reading this blog: Roger Maris was a NY Yankee who broke Babe Ruth's homerun record in 1961 of 60 homeruns in a season. We had watched the DVD about Roger Maris' 1961 season,"61*" , a few weeks ago, so stopping at his museum is actually interesting. Of course it's very interesting to Jere.

It's dark, but we decide to drive down main street Fargo anyway. Not very picturesque and a little rundown. I had also wanted to visit the Scandinavian-inspired church that they have here, but we simply run out of time.

We cannot believe it—the skies are blue again today in Ketchikan. It is one of the nicest days weather-wise we’ve had in Alaska. Three days of blue skies in Ketchikan, the rainiest city in Alaska. The one town in Alaska we expected rain. The temperature actually gets above 70 degrees today. We have had very few days in the last month where we’ve reached 60 degrees! So, great weather for our last day in Alaska.

We’re going to be driving a lot the next few days after we get off the ferry at Prince Rupert tomorrow, so we take a day to basically relax. We do some chores in the morning, have lunch and then head out to the state park north of us (Settlers Cove) for a walk through the beach and rain forest. We spend time on the beach just looking around (and watching 2 harbor seals in the water)

and then walk the 1-mile loop through the temperate rain forest.

We drive back to the trailer to grab a few folding chairs and then head to Refuge Cove State Park to sit on the shore for the rest of the afternoon. There are several families swimming in the water, but we didn’t come prepared to swim. Joe rolls up his jeans and goes in the water but Jere and I sit on the shore and read.

Around 6:30 we decide to go get the trailer and drive to the ferry dock. Our ferry doesn’t leave til 12:30am and we don't need to be there til 10:30pm, but we're anxious to leave and we want to get to the dock in the daylight.

We arrive at the dock and make dinner. There are already at least a half dozen other RVs waiting in the parking lot.

After dinner we walk over to the dock and watch a sternwheeler go by the dock

We then take a short walk to the small boat harbor near the ferry and then sit around the trailer relaxing and waiting for the ferry.

Around midnight we start loading onto the ferry. This is the third time we’re traveling on the Taku so the attendant recognizes us, “You again?” The other two times we traveled on the Taku we had to back on the ferry, so Jere asks if we’ll have to back on this time? We’re told not only can we drive on this time, but we can drive off at Prince Rupert. No backing up in the ferry? Yea!!! We're also not the longest rig on the ferry this time--there's a motorhome pulling a boat that is 56' (we're 52').

We’re one of the first ones on the ferry. We get the keys to our cabin, drop off our backpacks and go up to watch the ferry leave. Our last ride on Alaska's ferries. It's been an adventure driving on/off the ferries. Some people would even say that it is part of the Alaska RV Trip experience :-) I really enjoyed visiting the small fishing towns in southeast Alaska, but I'm glad we're done with getting on/off the ferries.

We are in Ketchikan, the rainiest town in Alaska, and we have blue skies! This is the one town we expected rain. Please don't think that I'm complaining--this weather is great!

We eat breakfast and walk down to the dock at the campground.

The tide is really low this morning. We can even see starfish from the dock.

We walk around the dock and look at all the small fish. The fishermen threw some of their waste into the water and the small fish are gorging themselves with food.

Our first stop today is at Saxmon Totem Park, on the other side of Ketchikan (our campground is about 14 miles north of town). The weather is great and we enjoy the scenery on the way to Totem Park, including a dock full of floatplanes:

Saxmon Totem Park is just what the name says: a park full of totem poles. There is also a clan house that is very nicely done, inside and out, and a shop where two men are carving a totem pole.

Then we drive south of town along South Tongass Highway. This again, is not a highway, but it’s name says ‘highway’. It’s a 2 lane rural road. We pull off at a beach and make some sandwiches for lunch. There’s a group of tourists snorkeling along the shore, so we watch them and the fisherman and the jumping salmon while we eat.

The road continues for a few more miles past an old logging camp and several waterfalls. We stop at one of the waterfalls and find some ripe salmon berries to try.

Then we’re off to yet another totem pole exhibit, Ketchikan’s Totem Heritage Center. This is a museum that tries to preserve old totem poles of the Tlingit and Haidi tribes. We learn even more about totem poles and then walk around the area.

Then it’s off to downtown Ketchikan for some shopping and dinner. After buying a few trinkets, we have dinner at Annabelle’s. This restaurant is in the Gilmore Hotel, where we stayed in Ketchikan 13 years ago when we visited. Good salmon chowder and Alaska Dungeness crab cakes.

We visit a few more gift shops and then head back to the trailer to do laundry. The washers are really cheap here, $1/load. However, the water in the campground is brown—tannic brown—pretty gross looking to me, even though I know it won’t hurt me. But I do the wash in it anyway and the clothes look fine when they’re done. Just as my body was clean after this morning's shower in the brown water, but no way will I use the brown water to brush my teeth!

I take a break in the middle of laundry to go down to the dock to look at the sunset—it is gorgeous!!! Several of us are down on the docks taking pictures. Definitely not the sunset I expected in Ketchikan, the rainiest town in Alaska.

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.