After five days of photographing from bouncing Zodiacs or the windy front-deck of the Quest (our ship), it was nice to pull into dry land for a day. Petersburg is a small fishing town, established by an entrepreneurial Norwegian who started a fishing business in a spot that reminded him of home, and then invited all his friends and family to emigrate there. It’s a remote town, on an island that is accessible by boat or plane. It does have an airport that can handle a 737, and Air Alaska flies a milk-run here twice a day. It’s a really cute town in an incredibly beautiful place. At any rate, we docked here, and we all had multiple options for off-ship adventures – 3 or 4 different hikes, a bicycle ride around town and a Zodiac cruise thru the harbor. With a sore knee, and a variety of aches and pains from sleeping in an uncomfortable bed for 5 nights, I opted for 2 relatively short hikes, with the possibility of swapping the afternoon one for a Zodiac ride around the harbor.
I did spend some time in the morning discussing the cavitation problem with my cabin neighbors – they were equally as pissed and exhausted from lack of sleep. The general consensus was that we should have been informed beforehand, and maybe should be offered something like a credit we can apply to another trip. I’m not holding my breath for that. The photo above shows me pointing to my luxury cabin portholes on the steerage level. It is a very nice cabin, as long as you are hard of hearing.
We had local guides leading all the hikes – ours was a young woman who grew up in the town. Her graduating class size was 30. In grade school, you have a mandatory survival skills class, where you learn to forage in the woods in case you get stranded. Seriously. They take the entire class out to the woods, and grade them on how they find food, make fire, and make a shelter, and survive for 2 days. The students have to stay until they pass (just kidding). Funny, we were never taught these skills growing up in Brooklyn. She had a lot of great stories about living in a small, remote community. It’s a really different life style.
We ran out of luck in terms of weather to some degree (another unintended pun) – cool and foggy, but at least it was not raining and it cleared up later in the day. The hike was more interesting than I thought it would be – the land around here is very boggy – they do get lots of rain. There are large areas that are mostly tree-less, but covered with a lot of low, interesting plants including some carnivorous ones.
They eat bugs, not people. And you don’t want to go wandering through these areas unless you want to sink down in muck. The trail meandered through the bogs into some really beautiful dense forests. Also filled with strange plants, some of which you definitely do not want to touch- many nasty thorns, worse than rose bushes. I would not suggest bushwhacking around here. There was not much else to see since once we reached the view point the distant mountains (border with British Columbia) and the Frederick Sound were socked in with fog. But there was a nice metal bench, made by a local artist. Too wet to sit on but nice to look at.
I did find a few things to photograph, including the first banana slug that I’ve seen in the wild. Woo hoo.I really liked the moss covered, rotting tree stump as well.
My knee held up OK on this hike, but I decided not to push my luck, and did swap out a second hike for the Zodiac tour of the harbor. That turned out well – I never knew much about commercial fishing boats, and we learned a lot from our boat driver (who was from the area). Now I know what a purse net is, and how it works. Important information for living in Sacramento. We also cruised through an extremely large flock of gulls (3 types) which hang around the fish processing plant, and checked out a rotting, abandoned fishing boat, and went by the processing plant where they suck out salmon from the boats. Quite the adventure.
It was nice having a “light” day for a change. I wish I had spent some time in the town – there were a few interesting shops and a good restaurant or two. There was one shop run by a local Native American that sold unique t-shirts which the crew wore for dinner that night. Cute, but I have a draw full of interesting t-shirts at home. My favorite is a custom one I had made commemorating my Half-Dome hike with a line for a Terminator movie – Old But Not Obsolete.
There are gobs of whales in the channel year round, with over 200 during the summer. and there is a lot more to see in the area – glaciers, bears, moose. It might be worth another visit on my own in the future. This would classify as an off the beaten path adventure.
One more location to go – a day in a fjord with another glacier. And then we disembark in Juneau on Sunday and fly back to my boring life in California. But it will be good to get home – I miss my bed and shower. Plus my hummingbirds have probably emptied the feeders by now. They are probably pecking at the windows.
The Traveling Widower 