MONDAY, JUNE 24

MONDAY, JUNE 24:   

     Got packed up and left the RV Park at about 10:00.  A little wistful leaving this place.  Even though it didn’t have the fantastic view that our place at Wrangell did, it was a very, very nice.  Quiet and peaceful, and somehow felt like home.  The resident manager, Skip,  is a little rough around the edges, (hard for him to complete a sentence without at least 1 or 2 four-letter words), but a very nice, amiable guy.  A former truck driver in California.  We’ll miss his casual friendliness & banter.  

     Another gorgeous day, so drove to the ferry terminal and left the truck & RV and unhooked our bikes and went riding.  Did the same loop around town we did the other day.  The water was sparkling in the sun, and the Narrows did look like a swollen river, as we’d been told they’d look at ultra high tide.  Stopped to talk for a while with a guy who was re-building a log picnic shelter at Sandy Beach.  He explained to Bill the old fashioned tried-and-true techniques he was using to trim the logs so that they would fit together perfectly.  He honed his skills on many years of cutting new trails – he’s headed trail crews in Yosemite and Sequoia, as well as all up & down the California coast.  He said that the toughest part was the logistics of getting in helicopters with food and supplies for 15 people for 1 week.  Things you never think about as you’re hiking a challenging trail up a mountain – you just take it for granted that there’s this nicely carved out trail.

     Picked up another package of fresh smoked salmon – thought we could snack on it on the ferry.  Then hung out in the truck til time to board.     

     Bid Adieu to Petersburg . . . it’s always fun to see the town in which we’ve spent time and gotten familiar with in a different perspective, similar to a bird’s eye view, as the ferry gradually pulls us away . . . we can see where we camped in relation to the town, the roads we rode on, bike trails we traveled, etc.  

 

 

 

                                              Our favorite perimeter bike path                           

        As we got underway, what a perfect day to be on the sun deck of the ferry, seeing beautiful carpeted forests and white-peaked mountains on all sides!    

            

 

 

     About 2 or 3 hours out, the captain announced that he was seeing some whales from the bridge.  Not unexpected, as Frederick Sound is a huge feeding ground for humpbacks and other whales.  We caught a glimpse of one.

 The rest of the time we spent just reading, chatting, and simply relaxing in the warmth and spectacular scenery.

      After about 4 hours, we stopped briefly at the town of Kake.  This is a small Tlingit village;; most very small towns in Alaska are predominantly made up of Native people, often with a subsistence lifestyle still.

 

 Bill took Pappy off the boat for R&R, while I watched perched above

 

 

                                                      Ferry play date for canines

                                                      Almost home (well, back in the truck, that is)

. Beautiful soft light as we left Kake.   Discernible difference in shades of lighting on east and west shores as we headed north.

 

      Was about 7:00, so went downstairs to the cafeteria to get something to eat.  Then to the top deck again.  Twilight and sunset achingly gorgeous.  Truly an intimation of eternity.  Our human frame can’t explain such sublime peaceful beauty.  All we can do is accept it as a transcendental gift from the Author of all Beauty.

 

 

 

 

       Was definitely cooler now, so bundled up in jackets and pulled our plastic recliners back out of the open air under the Solarium heated roof.  We brought our sleeping bags, intending to roll them out on the recliners and warmly snooze there.  But Bill didn’t think he could get comfortable on those hard plastic recliners, and decided to go downstairs to the reclining chair lounge room.  I stayed a while longer, but then followed as it got darker.  I’m kind of sorry now that I did – I think that if I had undone my sleeping bag, it would have absorbed a lot of the discomfort of the plastic.  As it was, I caught a couple of catnaps downstairs; Bill slept more soundly.  At about 2:00 or so, the captain woke us by announcing that we were about 30 min out of Sitka.     

Got off easily (there were very few people on this boat – apparently not many folks want to get into Sitka past midnight!)  Our RV Park is right down the road from the ferry, not even ½ mile, so was easy to find.   However, not so easy to back the RV into its tight spot.  Took more than 1 try.  Bad news:  Was 3:00 a.m.  Good news:  Was 3:00 a.m.  Which, in Southeast Alaska in June, means that the sun was coming up and we had light!  When we finally got backed in and hooked up, it was 3:45.  We knew that the adrenalin would soon wear off, so got into bed and told each other that we’d get up when we got up.