Finally, our first ports o' call!

AlaskaFest 2005 - Thursday, June 9, 2005

Inside Passage
1: Bellingham - Queen Charlotte
2: QC to S of Ketchikan
3: Ketchikan to Petersburg
4: Sitka to Juneau

Welcome to Ketchikan, Alaska!

I woke up and realized, hey!, the boat isn't rocking or moving! We've stopped, we've stopped, get to your lifeboat stations..... or, we actually just slept through the part of us arriving back in America! That's right, the ferry had finally docked in the U.S. of A., in Ketchikan, Alaska, to be precise. Ketchikan is pretty much the first city you can arrive at when getting back into Alaskan waters. It was about 8am when we finally woke up and decided it's time to get off this boat and see some tourist crap! We had about 5 hours to kill in Ketchikan, which was pretty cool considering we're on a ferry and not a cruise ship. So, we walked out to the street and saw the sign: 2 miles to Ketchikan city center. Grrrreeaaaat. We had just missed the bus by looking at the sign, so you know what that means if you've ever read any of my other website stuff: Say screw it and go back to bed! Okay, not really - it means it's time to Tambien! So we tambiened the 2-mile walk to the city center, with me fairly certain there wasn't a city center to head to as we walked through the 'non-touristy' parts of Ketchikan. But amazingly, once you walked those 2 miles, I was shocked to discover there actually was a touristy part - and let me tell you, it really is all Touristy crap. It is packed with cruise ship vacationers, lots of souvenir and jewelry shops (now I ask you, if you've already spent many thousands of dollars to go on this cruise, why would you also now want to spend hundreds to thousands on jewelry? I don't understand it.) and lots of Indian stuff. That was kind of neat to see all the totem poles around town. Apparently, about 8 miles south (I like to tambien, but not that far) is a place where there are TONS of totem poles and huge ones at that. We saw Creek Street, which I think I've heard of or seen pictures of before, as it's this place where the shacks are on a creek. Maybe you've seen it before too, based on the pics below? We then went on this lame funicular that took us to a ..... hotel. And it cost us $2. RIP OFF! And the 'operator' was seriously scary. Anyways, we took the trail back down to the city, had a beer in a bar, and then just missed the bus, again, and walked the 2 miles back to the ferry. After all that excitement, it was time to crash for a little while, as our next stop wasn't until Wrangell, which is a little ways as you can see.

Inside Passage - Ketchikan photos

Jason made a friend

The free totems

Totem vision

Totem and Me

Totems rock!

Now that's a big totem pole

Hi Mom!

Creek street's creek

It's Creek Street - doesn't it look familiar?

Doesn't that guy look familiar?

Some of the pretty scenery from where the $2 funicular took us

Totem ring, in the hotel's parking lot

Me and Jason on the hike down

The hike down the Married Man's Path (because apparently Creek St was the Red LIght district back in the day)

How could you name a street this?

Off to Wrangell and the Wrangell Narrows

So we had some more time to kill. And kill it we did, with sleep, walking around the ship deck looking at beautiful Alaskan scenery, more sleep, Soft Batch cookies, taking pictures, talking, whatever. And about 7 hours later, we finally approached Wrangell, which is situated in the midst of lots of beautiful mountains and water. It's a tiny town, but lots of big houses, so methinks some people with money live here as a remote getaway or something. The ferry wasn't staying for a long period of time, just long enough to let people out who were leaving and get those people on who were coming along. During that time, this kid decided to make friends with us, and he explained to me that him and his brother had found out that when they spit over the side, that the spit exploded away RIGHT before it hit the water. I asked him how he could prove that. I mean, after all, nothing can just explode away into nothingness for no apparent reason. He didn't think I should be questioning him. I'll never have kids. Jason managed to catch a picture or two of me and the kid. Joy.

Anyways, after we departed beautiful Wrangell (where spit explodes away), we were told about the precarious journey ahead of us: the threading of the Wrangell Narrows. To fully appreciate this story, turn off all the lights around you and let the glow of the computer screen be your companion as I regale you with the harrowing story of the Wrangell Narrows. You see, cruise ships can't go this way because it's too shallow - and in fact, if the ferry were to go this way during the wrong part of the tide, it would run aground and then the infamous Watery Beast of Wrangell would clamber on board and devour all souls aboard. YIKES!!!! We were all issued harpoon guns and St Christopher medals in order to ward off the beast, and alas, some of the passengers were lost by rogue tentacles, but we fought off the beast and made it through the dangerous Narrows. I escaped with a few scrapes and Jason, well, he escaped just barely with his sanity. To this day, I still have nightmares about the Narrows. Okay, okay, I kid I kid. But we were told that this was a harrowing part of the journey as the water is super shallow and in order to find the deepest parts of the very narrow Narrows, the captain had to slowly navigate the tons of navigation buoys, affectionately called Christmas Tree Lane. For this part of the journey, a lot of people came out on deck to watch us thread slowly but surely through. It was kinda neat, and kinda cold, but it was cool nonetheless. After you get through the Narrows, you end up at Petersburg, but by that point, Jason and I had found ourselves back in the bar playing yahtzee and getting drunk again. It's not as if there was time or daylight to sightsee in Petersburg!

Wrangell/Wrangell Narrows Pictures

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