First Day in Wrangell

Robert, Thursday, June 5
We both slept almost 12 hours last night. I think it was a combination of getting up early and then getting cold and wet while setting up here. I set up my computer and discovered that we had the best internet service that we have had on this trip. It is great to have wifi in a campground so that we don’t have to drive around town looking for hot spots. As this campground only has 7 spaces (in other words, it is tiny) it really surprised us that they did offer free wifi. The population of Wrangell is about 2,000. It looks like any similar sized town that does not get 10,000 tourists off of cruise ships every day. In other words, a few small bars, a couple of grocery stores, two laundromats (but one is closed), and a hardware store just about sums it up. You could walk from one end of town to the other in under 15 minutes. Cruise ships don’t come here often as it is really out of the way. There is a ship route that passes through a place called the "Wrangell Narrows" just to the north of town. We haven’t seen it yet but it is reported to be very narrow and shallow. I read one account that said you could throw rocks and hit either bank from the ferry. The ferries can handle it only at high tide but the cruise ships cannot. That means a cruise ship has to go miles out of the way when traveling to the north of here. And of course, once they get here there aren’t the hundreds of t-shirt shops and jewelry stores that seem to be preferred by the tourists. What the town is known for is being like towns in Alaska were like before the big cruise ships came. After a slow start, we did go out exploring. After last night, the weather was beautiful. The sun was out, the sky was blue, it was warm, and it was definitely short sleeve shirt weather. About 1 mile to the north of town is petroglyph beach. There are petroglyphs carved on the rocks that are on the beach. You can walk down some stairs to the beach and find a number of petroglyphs. The best time is at low tide but we were just driving around and decided to stop. The tides here run around 4 feet and it somewhere between high and low when we were there. We did manage to locate a visitor’s center so we stopped to pick up literature on Wrangell. We asked where we could buy local fresh fish in town and we were told that we couldn’t. The economy of this town is fishing and logging but nowhere can you buy fresh fish! We were told that almost everyone in town has a boat and when they want fresh fish, they go catch it. We came back "home" and set up the lawn chairs. It wasn’t too shabby just to sit in the sun and do nothing. When we made reservations at this campground, the manager told us that we would have to park in the overflow space. That meant that we were in a site that backed up to a storage shed with the office on one side and the manager’s RV on the other. While we were sitting there enjoying the sun, the manager came over and said that if we wanted to move we could have one of the regular sites. We quickly closed everything up and moved to a much better site. Out of the 7 sites, one is occupied by the manager, one by us, one from another couple from Colorado, and one from a couple from Virginia. I don’t know about the other three sites. The other couple from Colorado is from Lakewood (very close to home) and the couple from Virginia is from Lake Anna although they lived in Manassas (very close to where we lived in Fairfax) for a long time. After we moved the rig we grilled chicken for dinner. We have a small Weber gas grill. When we first got it I didn’t like it but over time I have learned how to use it. I turn it up high to heat it, put the food on it, and then turn it down to cook. Now I really like it and the chicken was great. I almost forgot, we have now been on the road for 4 weeks. In case it is not clear from our posts, we are having a great time!