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Published: July 23rd 2010
Lyndsey
Happy Birthday cake???Eurkea
(yo̵o rē′kə) I've got it; yes; that's it: used to express triumphant achievement, success, or discovery
July 09, 2010. Hello again from Prince Rupert. We are spending another day in Prince Rupert as we wait for the Alaskan Marine Highway Ferry to take us to Ketchikan Alaska. While on the ferry last night we found a hostel in Prince Rupert called the Pioneer Hostel. We docked at about 7:30 am, called the hostel and they have a bed for us and are open all day so we can arrive at anytime. We went to Timmy's for some tasty, strong hot coffee and a yummy sausage breakfast sandwich. (I really think I could eat those things every morning, but someone ruined things for me and told me how many calories are in one. YIKES). Got to the hostel at about 8:30 and met Christy, our hostess. She was in the kitchen shellling fresh crab. Of course I ewwed and ahhed about it and she couldn't wait to offer me one to get it off her hands. Before I even unpacked I was elbow deep in crab shells, guts and of course the yummy meat. Can't wait for fresh crab
Ferry living
Solarium on the ferry in garlic butter for supper. So glad we found a hostel room for today, cause it just rained and was miserable here all day.
We met some wonderful people at the hostel. Folks from all over the world. Folks from the U.K, Switzerland, Australia, Sweden, Seattle and Rebekkah from New Zealand. We chatted with Becky about her trip and our trip and she was so incredibly excited for us. Feels great to have people so excited about this journey. Keeps us encouraged (especially when it rains all the time). Welcome to our blog Becky and who knows, maybe one day we will take you up on your offer and see you in New Zealand. Had our garlic, butter soaked crab for supper and it was not as good as we expected-------- it was BETTER!!!! Read and visited and shared travel stories with our new friends and off to bed, cause we need to be on the ferry by 7:00 am.
July 10, we are on the ferry now to Alaska. On the ferry we met a lovely young lady named Lyndsey. Lyndsey is on her way to the Prince of Wales Island to work for the salmon season.
Solarium
hanging out on the lounge chairs It was her 26th birthday on this day. Happy Birthday Lyndsey!!!!. We didn't have a Birthday cake to share with her so we shared our peanut butter and jam crackers and told her that it would have to do for her birthday cake, but once we docked in Ketchikan, we would take her out for a Birthday drink. We sat and shared our lives and stories with Lyndsey and she with us in the solarium of the ship. The solarium is a large area at the back of all the Alaskan ferries where there is a open area, where people can set up their tents and/or mats and another area that is under a yellow dome with heaters and lounge chairs where travellers can sit and watch the scenery go by and/or sleep when they need to in the warmth. Really kinda neat. Docked in Ketchikan, found a little pub, met Lyndsey for a quick birthday beer and off she went to catch her next ferry. We wish you well with your summer job Lyndsey and absolutely we will connect with you when we get to Flagstaff. Hopefully you will be home from your travels.
We are hostelling again
here in Ketchikan and this time our hostel is in the United Methodist Church. Found the hostel and went to explore Ketchikan. Ketchikan claims to be the salmon capital of the world. It may be, but it must also be the RAIN-I-EST capital of something. It rains an average of 162 inches per year. That's 12.5 FEET. Need to have webbed feet to live here my friends. It's really hard to see the water in Ketchican for all the cruise ships that are docked here. 3 great big ships today and I guess sometimes 5. Between 6000-12,000 tourists desend on this town daily. It truly is a shame, but due to the lifestyle we think we need, tourism seems to be everywhere and seems to be king. Went to hang out a bit on the wharf and watch people. Had some dinner and checked the ferry schedule. We didn't realize it but the ferry schedule will determine our next few days in Alaska. Talk about dumb tourists---we thought that we could just jump on a ferry, decide where we wanted to go and the ferry would take us there. NOT!!! The ferries of course don't go to every community every
Creek Street
Red light district at one time day, so we need to plan--- DUH!!
July 11. 2010 - Out of the Hostel we go. They kick out the travellers out at 9:00 am. That's O.K we were going to watch the Final game of the World Cup and witness the Dutch (HUP Holland HUP) hopefully kick Spain's BUTT, but --- no such luck eh? We went to this little place called the Sourdough Bar. Lots of other tourists in there as well watching the game. Lots of folks cheering for either team. The energy was amazing and so much fun to watch the different groups cheering for thier prospective teams using lots of different languages. Crazy fun!!! Rene finished watching the game and I wrote in my blog. After the game we decided to take a self guided tour of Ketchikan. We saw lots of this truly amazing fish capital that I don't think even the cruise tourists see. A city built on the side of a rock. Lots of hills and stairs to climb to see the sights. For one of the tour stops we had to climb 126 stairs, up and back. That's allot of steps. Good cardio eh Carla? Saw a salmon run
Ferry
View from the ferry creek with a fish ladder, saw some folks fishing off a bridge, saw some interesting totem poles, and stopped a while to watch some prople fishing right off the town's bridge. We looked in the water and saw some HUGE fish. No one caught anything while we were watching. TOO BAD.
One of the really cool things about Ketchikan is "Creek Street". This is a waterfront street where back in the day, the ladies of the night worked. In Kechikan and all over Alaska and the Yukon, ladies of the night were a major part of the history. Really cool little street. Of course the while street is now changed to appeal to the tourists, but I'm sure in it's hayday it was an interesting, livley, but often scary and hurtful place for the women who worked there. After our tour we went back to the wharf. The cruise ships were gone and it was like Ketchikan became a ghost town. No one around and all the shops were closed up. We stopped and had a coffee and bowl of fresh yummy clam chowder.
Back to the Hostel as we are catching the ferry again @3:00 AM. to
Cicely
I mean Wrangell Wrangell. Linda at the Hostel allowed us to stay at the hostel till 11:00pm. We went to the Ferry Terminal and stay there until we are allowed to board the ship at 2:00 am. Got to the Ferry Terminal and because the ferry was docked there and just waiting until 3:00am, the personell told us we could board immediately and just stay on the ferry. HURRAH!!!! Set up our "beds" in the solarium and tucked ourselves in for the night. Erin, who we met in Ketchikan, told me of Dramamine. Dramamine is a motion sickness pill---well it seems to work for sleeping soundly as well. I'm not sleeping so well in all the different beds etc, so at this point I was glad to take just about anything to have a full long sleep. Took the pill and guess what? Slept like a baby through the night. Woke up a couple of times to change positions, but fell right back to sleep. Gonna find me some of those magic pills.
July 12, 2010 woke up on the ferry and are moving towards Wrangell. We decided Wrangell would be one of our stops on this trip. Well really there are
Wrangell
Bird's eye view of Wrangell 2 things that we need to do while we are in Alaska. One of the things is to see "small town" Alaska and the reason we need to see this is because of the T.V series, Northern Exposure". (know it???)Northern Exposure is one of our favorite T.V series. It's not on any longer, but a couple of years ago I bought the box series for Rene and it has become one of our favorite things to do on a cold Saturday morning. We lay in bed and watch a couple of episodes and then get up and start our day. We have dreamed many times about finding our Cicely. (that's the name of the town on the show) Anyway, we get off the ferry at 8:45 am and because Wrangell has only two main streets, we found our new home (hostel) within minutes. We went in and met Nancy our hostess. This time our hostel is in the Presbyterian Church.
Oh Wrangell Alaska. A small working Alaskan town. About 1500 people. We have found our Cicely. We just couldn't find Dr. Joel Fleshman, Minnifield, Maggie, Holling, Shelly or Chris. We waited and waited for the moose to cross the
street as well, but it never showed up either. We did find some other animals in town though. We went to one of the local "watering holes" and met some of the locals. We ordered a drink and the bartender started to pour this drink. He just kept pouring and pouring and our eyes got bigger and bigger. When he was finally done pouring he had put about 3 ozs in each of our glasses. Couldn't even drink it, it was so strong. Kept adding pepsi and finally it was drinkable. Didn't need more than one. Met a couple other local people who entertained us with thier stories of Alaska life.
July 13, 2010 we woke up to some sun and some clouds. More clouds than sun---- seems to be the weather story of this trip so far. We are going to rest and relax while we're here in Cicely---oops I mean Wrangell. It really is such a sleepy little working town. Real Alaska, if you ask us. Had a great day of reading, walking, napping, reading, walking, napping. We went to a small home based fish packing place and bought a freshly caught 1.7 lb fillet of Salmon.
camp
camping in Skagway Oh my goodness!!!!! Little bit of butter, little bit of garlic, bake 15 minutes and viola--- perfection!!! Dinner for a King and Queen. Went to the library for a couple of hours to play on the internet and back home to bed.
July 14, 2010, ferry leaves Wrangell for Juneau at 11:00 am. We are filled with melancholy this morning. We have to leave our Cicely today and there is certainly some sadness, but also we are also so thankful that we found this little gem in the wilds of Alaska. The ferry is going to dock in Juneau July 15 at 7:30 am and so we are sleeping once again on the ferry in the solarium. It was a very different experience to spend the whole day on the ferry. I watched a couple of movies in the lounge area of the ship. Rene and I watched spectacular Alaskan scenery as we floated past, talked with other travellers and of course slept some. As we were travelling it continued to rain and really be miserable weather. Shortly before we got to Juneau Rene and I decided to skip Juneau altogether and sail on to Skagway. This was really
downtown skagway
old gold rush town crazy, because when we were planning our trip we had decided that Juneau was one of the stops we wanted to make and we even changed our email to juneau10@hotmail.com in honor of our stopping in Juneau. Oh well---again another diversion. We are sick of rain and we hear that the weather is always better the farther north and the more inland, so we are headed north and inland. We of course weren't sure we could make this change, so we got off the ferry at Juneau and asked at the ticket booth and they said "no problem". Back we went on the ferry for another couple of hours before we dock in Sagway.
July 15, 2010 we get off the ferry, jump on our bike and find a campground. The sun is shining and the weather is gorgeous, so we decided we wanted to camp. Found this great litttle campsite. Set up camp and set off into town again to discover another Alaskan town. Well --- Sagway is another big cruise ship stop and today like everyother day 10,000 tourists and cruise ship staff descend on Sagway. We spent the day being tourists and watching people. Had a great day and one of the reasons it was great was just because the weather was wonderful. Oh my, the difference sun can make on one's soul and demeanor.
More to come as we head out towards the Yukon.
And so we remain---------
In the Grip of Grace
Rene and Crystal
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carla
non-member comment
Damn plans!
Damn plans! Gets in the way of spontinaity. So what, you have to follow some rules now and again...sounds like fun in spite of the rain. I think it has been raining pretty much everywhere. I've been thinking of building me a big boat. It's exciting to meet people from all over. That is learning that you can't find in a book. The experiences you have been having and will continue to have can not happen any other way and will be invaluable. Ah life experience. And yes, the stairs sound like crazy cardio! Well continue on and continue to share your adventure with us. Until next blog (I hope it is soon), take care of yourselves. - Carla