July 1, 2000 - Ketchikan, Alaska!
Motoring (of course) up Revillagegedo Channel towards Ketchikan, we were surprised with gorgeous sparkling sunshine, which we hadn't seen for at least two weeks. We were also greeted with several orcas coming up for air only a hundred or so yards of our starboard. That was amazing! Dodging a few cruise ships in Tongass narrows, we anxiously approached our first Alaskan port, charming little Ketchikan. We tied up at the city floats in front of the downtown area, and our whirlwind week in Ketchikan began.
We immediately met a huge variety of interesting people, both locals and visitors alike. A husband and wife who own a 75 year-old wooden fishing tender gave us a tour of their gorgeous boat. We met a fascinating man from California who was singlehanding his 65-foot ketch. We even got taken out salmon fishing with some people who own a local internet cafe. Check out the photo of Michael and his 30 lb. King Salmon he reeled in!
We had a marvelous time exploring Ketchikan and were continually amazed with how friendly and generous the residents were. We even got job offers from the owners of the internet cafe, but they understood our desire to continue our journey up to Juneau and mull over the possibility of working in Ketchikan. Ketchikan is a nice town, but we were a bit thrown off by the fact that that every other business was a bar or liquor store. Apparently, the local pulp mill shut down a few years ago and the town has been in a bit of a depression. Ketchikan's economy is picking up now with it's tourist shops and activities, but gone are the days of abundant logging and fishing...an interesting debate we'll be sure to hear more of.
After stocking up on groceries, doing laundry, and changing the engine oil, we said good-bye to this lively little town and continued on for Wrangell. We stopped for two days to recoup from the activity of Ketchikan in Santa Anna Inlet, a gorgeous quiet place where we spent time marveling at the wild beauty of Alaska. Never before had we seen such beautiful natural places untouched by man. We had seen plenty of clear cut forests, but there were many more mountainsides with rolling acres of virgin forest, so many trees that it look like grass covering the hillsides. It is easy to feel very dwarfed here, something I've never felt in the Puget Sound area.
We arrived at Wrangell on the 4th of July, and walked the streets of this depressed tiny town to the sounds of fire crackers going on all around us. This town seems not to have recovered from it's pulp mill closures, but still has a small fishing industry. It did have an impressive fireworks display, though. Wrangell has a very small transient boat facility, and we were rafted up with four other boats (in the middle...) so we left when they did, the next morning.
On to Petersburg...up Wrangell Narrows. Our guide calls this passage "one of the more exciting passages of the trip" and it certainly was. The narrows consists of 21 miles of waterways and 66 navigation markers, narrowing to 300 feet in some places and can have quite a current. Exciting it was for us too, as we encountered an Alaska State Ferry a few miles in and had to dodge rocks and islands and kelp in keeping out of harm's way. But, we made it through and gladly arrived safely at Petersburg, where the narrows spill into Frederick Sound.
Moored among the fishing fleet at Petersburg, we were glad to see this town authentic and in good spirits. Not visited by the large cruise ships, Petersburg maintains it's true "Alaska" feeling (unlike the Disneyland atmosphere when one walks through the tourist areas of other towns). Petersburg also has a strong fishing industry, with several canneries running in town (we never quite got used to the smell though).
After several days exploring Petersburg, our excitement only grew as our next stops were the glaciers of Tracy Arm, and our final destination, Juneau.
-sdj-
