ALASKA- SITKA/KETCHIKAN

July 27 Friday Very rainy day. Didn't do much today except the laundry and catching up on correspondence. We have a long ferry trip to Ketchikan early in the morning.

July 28 Saturday Up at 3:30am to be at the ferry by 4:30am – our ferry, Taku, leaves at 5:45am. We knew several other Rvers who were taking this ferry also. Most of them were going to Petersburg which was a 12 hour ferry ride, but we were headed to Ketchikan, a 24 hour ride. We decided to get a stateroom for this leg of our trip so we could sleep when nightfall came. The ride was enjoyable...lots of visiting and viewing. We saw several whales, but it was difficult to capture a good picture – they move quickly...about 35miles per hour and our ship was only going about 20 miles an hour. Someone would yell “Whale” and we would all run to the windows with binoculars and cameras in hand. 

In line for the 5:30am ferry

Fishing boats headed out

Watching for whales

There's a whale!

Sea lions on  a buoy as we are heading into Petersburg

Sea planes and another seal

Eagle welcoming committee

After we stopped at Petersburg, we traveled through the Wrangell Narrows. This is very narrow part of the inside passage where you travel within 50-100 ft. of the shoreline on each side. It's a tortuous path with many rocks...the ship goes very slowly through here ---one of the crew stands at the bow of the ship through this area watching for dangers. The path is well marked with buoys, kind of like a slalom course! We made it through it smoothly. We arrived in Ketchikan around 5am.

Beautiful sunset in Wrangell Narrows

Islands in the distance

5:00am arrival in Ketchikan

We were only going to stay in Ketchikan for 2 nights, so we just pulled into the Walmart parking lot and asked their permission to park there. They were fine with that. It was rainy, but Ketchikan is noted for rain, so we didn't let that stand in the way. We headed downtown to see the the sights.

Rain gauge in Ketchikan- over 200 inches per year

Creek Street - original red light district

These cruise ships still amaze me...in downtown Ketchikan there were 5 ships in port and they are parked right next to the street of this small town! The paper runs a schedule of the cruise ships for the week...this was the current week's schedule: Saturday 3 ships 2,842 people; Sunday 5 ships 7,744 people; Monday 4 ships 8,428 people; Tuesday 2 ships 3,866 people; Wednesday 2 ships 2,284 people; Thursday 5 ships 8,9645 people; Friday 5 ships 9,516 people. AMAZING! Within a week's time this port, population of 8,050 sees 43,644 people pass through!

Cruise ship right next to the parking lot!

The rain let up a bit while we were visiting Totem Bight which is a site on the National Register of Historic Places. It has a Tlingit clan house and 15 totem poles in the Tongass Rain forest in Ketchikan.

Tlingit Clan house

Rain forest regrowth -- new tree taking root on top of old tree