Well, we finally made it to Alaska. WOW! We started out for Alaska in the middle of June last year, did not make it, and spent the winter in Victoria BC. That ended up being pretty darned good. So far, we have been in Alaska for ten days and I’ve got to tell you that this is shaping up to be the best yet.

Since I last communicated with you, we left Shearwater, which was just about as far north as we had made it last summer. Our plan was to follow the cruise ship route through the two long narrow channels named Princess Royal and Grenville. Between the two channels we made our first stop of the hot springs tour at Bishop Bay Hot Springs. Since we have been told throughtout our trip north that we were among the very first of the recreational boats heading north, we anticipated being at Bishop Bay all by our lonesome. This was not to be. Two trailerable fishing boats with two persons each from Burns Lake, BC arrived a day before we did. This turned out okay, as these were very fun redneck loggers, who took their fishing, crabbing and shrimping very seriously. They were very generous with their shrimp, crabs and libations, hosting a big cookout on the dock. When everything was cleaned up, we all went to the hot tub area and traded stories for quite some time. This is quite an impressive place. One of the Burns Lake folks has been coming here for over thirty years and gave us the history of the hot springs. I suspect that native peoples have used it for thousands of years, but the history given us starts with loggers. Although loggers have received bad press in recent years, the fact remains that these people spend their lives working out in the forests and are really tuned into nature. What other white men would have discovered a small trickle of hot water bubbling out of the ground and taken the initiative to make it accessible to other folks. Except for a very small area nearby, anchoring is improbable due to great depths. The loggers built a float where boats could tie up to, built a ramp connecting the float to land, made a trail to the trickle of hot water and built a wall of rocks to make a basin into which the hot water could be contained. From the words of a famous baseball movie, “build it and they will come.” Members of the Kittamat Yacht Club could access this gem in an hour or two in their high-speed sport fishing boats and the word was out. They took on the project of improving the place and did a spectacular job. An elevated boardwalk took the place of the up and down muddy slog from the boat ramp to the hot water. Concrete walls were built to just the right height to contain the hot water and allow a view, while seated in the pool, to the beauty of Bishop Bay. Maybe 10-15 people could comfortably sit in the pool together. A metal roof covers the pool and an expansive deck surrounds everything which includes a changing room for more modest folks. The bathtub temperature water enters the main pool continuously through a small pipe and exits to two smaller pools through overflow holes. If you can get here, this is living large.

The boredom of transiting the two long channels was broken up with numerous waterfalls falling from great heights. We made it to Prince Rupert to await favorable conditions to cross Dixon Entrance into Alaska. The trip from Prince Rupert to Ketchikan, where we must check in with US Customs and Border Protection, is a ninety-mile trip and many small boats cannot make it in one day. US Customs will allow small boats to anchor in a place called Foggy Bay, a little over half way to Ketchikan and we received permission to do so. There we once again learned that you cannot rely one hundred percent on electronic charting systems. We circled around a small cove trying to find just the right place to anchor with about thirty to forty feet of water and not too close to any rocks. Once we got the anchor down and properly set, the electronic chart showed us being several hundred yards on dry land. Good navigation requires the use of all tools available to you. Anyway, it was a really beautiful spot that we had all to ourselves.

The next day we made it to Ketchikan, Alaska through lumpy seas and strong winds. Once in Ketchikan, you hail the harbormaster on the radio and he will assign a spot to tie up the boat. I am always a bit uncomfortable entering an unfamiliar marina and my discomfort grew, as did the wind just as we approached the entrance. This is an act of faith. We were supposed to do a parallel parking job at the head of a fairway. The wind was now gusting strongly; and as we turned into the appropriate fairway, all we could see at the end where we were supposed to park, was a big tugboat. We were committed as with the strong wind it would be difficult to turn the boat around or back out of the fairway. As we approached the end of the fairway, we saw that there was indeed space in front of the tug for us to park, but it was going to be interesting to maneuver our boat past the very wide tug, make it go sideways to the dock and make it stop before crashing into a dock perpendicular to our appointed space. Did I mention that the wind was howling? Despite my fears we ended up in the right place for Kris to step onto the dock with only minor scratches to our hull. Then it got even more interesting. Before Kris was able to get a line secured, the wind started blowing us backwards, very quickly, into the bow of the tug. Fortunately, the whole tug crew was up in the wheelhouse and saw our difficulty. Lickety split they were on the dock to help us and avert a collision that would have hurt us much more than them. It took a cold beer to dilute the adrenalin that was coursing through my body.

Ketchikan is rainforest country. They receive about 140 inches of rain a year (it is really nice to have rain totals in inches again rather than centimeters). We thought that it was raining hard when our inflatable dingy took on at least five inches of water in less than two days, but were informed by locals that this was merely mist. This is a very nice small town that has everything we needed. It is located on an island with no bridges to it, so the only way in or out is by boat or airplane. An interesting side note is that the airport is located on an adjacent island and all passengers, fuel, food workers, etc. must take a short ferry trip to get to and from the airport. Long time and powerful former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens proposed that federal tax dollars to used to construct a bridge between the two islands to service the airport and promote industrial development. The opposing political party quickly labeled this as “the bridge to nowhere” and his proposal was laughed away. We spent a few more days than necessary for sightseeing and a nice dinner out for Kris’ birthday.

Ketchikan is a major cruise ship stop and we understand that the town goes through remarkable changes once the cruise ships start coming, sometimes four or more a day. The population doubles for a few hours and then by night all is back to normal. The area of a few blocks around the cruise ship docks is pretty much entirely devoted to the seasonal cruise ship tourist trade. When we walked through the area, nearly all of the shops were closed, as the cruise ships would not begin arriving for a few more days. I really do not understand why there are so many jewelry shops. Why can’t people just buy their jewelry back in their hometowns? We walked through Creek Street, the old bordello district back in the days before Alaskan statehood. Those ladies must have had good businesses, as some of the houses were quite nice. Another day we took the public bus out to Totem Bight Park home to many totem poles and a beautiful long house. This is not an authentic native village, but was constructed by Haida and Tlingit craftsmen as a CCC project back in the thirties. Very well done and a terrific learning experience for us in the ways of coastal native society and art.

We decided next to do the 140-mile circumnavigation of Revillagigedo Island on which Ketchikan is located. (Can’t find two people who pronounce it the same way.) The big lure to this trip is a visit to the Misty Fiords National Monument. Weather gods finally decided to do us a favor and we had four full days of cloudless skies and light winds. It felt almost balmy and we were down to only one or two layers of fleece. People who have travelled by boat to Alaska before us have almost universally told us that once you get there things are just different, bigger, more majestic, wilder. After making the circumnavigation of Revillagigedo Island, we are beginning to understand. At our first stop in a beautiful place called Naha Bay, there was a small no cost float that could accommodate maybe three boats of our size. This is good as the water surrounding is very deep for anchoring. From the ramp at the top of the float a trail led for several miles around a large brackish lagoon then followed a river to two lakes. We did not walk the entire trail, but enough to feel that this was a special place. Another night at another serene anchorage and then we turned into one of three of the fiords in the National Monument. As soon as we turned into Walker Cove from the main channel, Behm Canal, all we could say was WOW. From the snow clad mountaintops, tree clad nearly vertical walls came thousands of feet right into the sea. Five miles through twists and turns, each new vista more stunning than the last, waterfalls cascading everywhere. Finally, we rounded the bend into a cove where a Forest Service mooring buoy is supposed to be located. I was driving and in the distance spotted two shapes that looked like they may be a buoy and asked Kris to check with the binocs. She looked and said, “Well the one on the right is a bear.” We got ourselves secured to the mooring buoy and spent the next hour watching two brown bears, as they are known in Alaska, or Grizzlies to we of the lower forty eight, slowly ambling around pawing and sniffing at the ground in search of tasty morsels. Now we are really in Alaska. No one else is within many miles of us.

The next day we travelled about another ten miles down Behm Canal and entered Rudyard Arm to look for a mooring buoy in Punchbowl Cove. The first mile of Rudyard Arm was spectacular, but not quite as much as Walker Cove, that is until we rounded the corner into Punchbowl Cove. Again, snow clad mountaintops thousands of feet high, but now they are shear rock walls over a mile long that drop straight into the sea. Some of you have been to Princess Louisa Inlet in BC and some of you may have read my glowing description of it last year. Kris and I both agree that this tops Princess Louisa by orders of magnitude especially in the late afternoon light of a cloudless day. Absolutely spectacular.

We returned to Ketchikan yesterday and some more unusual, to us, things happened. I had developed a severe toothache during the last week and decided to see if I could have it checked out. I also needed to refill a prescription that requires an annual blood test, for which I am much overdue, prior to renewal. Short story is that we landed in Ketchikan just after noon yesterday and by five o’clock this afternoon, had the blood test results, the prescription filled, and root canal surgery. That whole process would have taken weeks in Redmond. We still have a lot to learn about dealing with things that we took for granted while living in a metropolitan area for several decades, like medical care, mail, banking and where to get the freshest produce. This, so far, just adds to the sense of adventure.

Go Mariners
Kirk