Inside Passage

Today the sun rose at 3:05 glimmering across Tongass Narrows, blazing into the open window,  the birds chatter a welcome to another long sunlight day punctuated by sun, clouds, sprinkles, fog...welcome to Ketchikan!  Our journey to here was abroad the Kennicott, one of the eleven vessels that make up the fleet of Alaska Marine Highway System (AMHS,) that covers 3,500 nautical miles of  awe inspiring views spanning from Bellingham, WA, North through the Inside Passage, across the Gulf of Alaska, through Prince William Sound, South-central/Southwest and down seven westward communities of the Aleutian Islands.  The City of Unalaska/Dutch harbor at the end of the Aleutian Chain is the terminus of the route.  We were two of an estimated 320,000 passengers who travel annually on the AMHS....our ship the Kennicott carries 499 passenger and has a vehicle capacity of 1,600 linear  feet or approximately 80 twenty foot vehicles.  Without the AMHS, air would be the only route of travel to visit cities like Ketchikan which is not accessible by road.

After flying to Seattle and spending a day touring Anacortes we boarded the ferry the Kennicott in Bellingham for an 1800 departure....as un-luck would have it we rented a car from the airport in Bellingham and had a difficult time securing a cab to the ferry terminal, we were the last passengers to board....less then 10 minutes before departure....not a particularly good idea.  As the passage was to last for 37 hours we had a cabin (one of 82) which was much nicer than I had expected.  The "bunk" beds were a challenge or perhaps I should say that navigating the ladder to the upper bunk was the challenge:)

With so many hours of sunlight/daylight the glorious scenery drew us to the upper decks and endless hours of awe struck observation of the beautiful passages, breeching Humpback whales, schools of torpedo-like Dall's Porpoise traveling at lightening speed fostering a "rooster-tail"  creates a 

hollow pocket of air that allows the porpoise to breathe while swimming,  soaring bald eagles,  flocks of marbled murrelets and black legged kittiwakes, snow capped mountains, verdant shores, waterfalls, stimulating conversation with fellow passengers from NJ, Ohio, Colorado, Alaska...it was a lovely boating holiday from boating...

Anacortes is lovely, of course the first place we ended up was by the commercial waterfront...looking at boats....there clearly is something about us and the sea......

We arrived in Ketchikan where two behemoth cruise ships were docked, thankfully our B&B is 5 miles from town so we don't have to "experience " the frenetic crowds....today we visited the Totem Bight Historic Park, in 1938 the US Forest Service began salvaging overgrown and weather-damaged cedar totem poles that were left behind when southeast Alaska Native peoples abandoned villages in the early 1900's in response to the decline of the barter economy.  Skilled carvers were hired from among the older Natives of  the Tlingit and Haida tribes and the poles found rotting were repaired or replicated. The worlds largest collection of totem poles is found here. It takes one person a year to create a totem pole and apparently for $1,000-5,000 a foot you too can have a totem carved for your native art collection.....I think that I will have to stick to a collection of C.Alan Johnson figurines.....

Ketchikan is an interesting small city that has a history steeped in fishing camps, gold and copper mining, fishing, a cannery and as transportation hub.  Today Ketchikan with a population of 15,000 is     a berthing place for 2-4 cruise ships a day which disembark up to 9,000 passengers each day.  A flotilla of float planes dot Tongas Passage and the sound of their frequent take-offs and landings mark
the two hour sight-seeing trips to Misty Fjords.  Buses and "duck" boats ferry the masses around to the tourist attractions.  We rented a car so we were able to "experience" the beautiful forests and wildlife the abounds here without having to "experience" the masses.

Ketchikan's namesake is a creek long used by the Tongass and Cape Fox bands of Tingits as a fish camp they called "kitchxaan heen," - over the eagle's wings river. It is in the heart of 17 million-acre Tongass National Forest, the largest in the US.  A flight to Misty Fjords National Monument (40 miles south of Ketchikan) was spectacular, the 2.3 million acres temperate rainforest created over millions of years of glacial periods and  when the glaciers melted 13,000 years ago, the granite walls, steep ravines, of deep canals, lakes, cascading waterfalls and inlets were left. Thanks to an annual rainfall of 12 feet, towering cedar, western Hemlock and Sitka spruce trees thrive. 

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endless array of visual wonder.  

I'm sitting at the edge of Ward Lake, Kurt will be fishing when he finishes getting ready to go fishing, the faint waning moon is setting over the evergreen tree tops on the years ago distant shore and it is reflected in the mirriw surface of the lake.  It's early light, a loon calls, woodpeckers tat, steller jays are screeching-squaking of immitating the calls of other birds,  feeding  fish disturb the reflection of the forest.  The sun is inching its way towards the top of other line on the mountain behind us casting a brighter light on the lake and distant shore of temporate rainforst that is home to red cedar, Canadian Hemlock and Sitka Spruce,   50' from where I sit a  mature bald eagle silently glided in and picked up a fish and blithly continues on its flight.  So far the eagles 1, fisherman 0.    It just doesn't get much better than this. 

Although that being said, the fish hatchery located on a stream leading into Herring Bay is a favorite feeding and training arena for bald eagles and black bears. For hours we watched immature eagles attempting to  

fetch King salmon from the shallow river, obviously the fetcing is an acquired skill as most of the somewhat clumsyimmature eagles repeatedly came up short of a meal.  THE black bears weren't having an easy time of it either

The aerobatics of mature the eagles was spetacular.  

Immature bald eagles are as large as the adults, but lack the white head and tail.  instead they are mottles brown and white.  First year eagles are dark brown with brown eyes adn a brown bill.  In the second and third uears they develop a white bib that stands o

ut against the darker belly feathers---this eventually darkens t a uniform brown. The white head and tail develop around the fifth year.  As the eagle matures, it's bill and eyes gradually turn yellow.