Leslie Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Ketchikan equals rain. Yes, we had hours and hours of pouring rain today.I wasn’t sure we’d ever get out to do anything but by mid-afternoon the weather finally broke and we were able to go into town. Our campsite is 14 miles north of the town of Ketchikan. Ketchikan is a town of 8000 inhabitants that can be increased by a similar number when the cruise ships are in town. The cruise ships only remain during the day so that after the 6:00 pm departure of hte last cruise ship the town pretty much closes up shop. Ketchikan is the 4th largest town in Alaska but that isn’t really saying too much. Ketchikan, like most of the town on the southeast coast, is accessible only by boat or by air. Ketchikan is 6 hours by ferry boat to the next town, either Prince Rupert, BC to the south or Wrangell, AK to the north.
From my research many of these towns don’t have a municipal water or sewage disposal system. Ketchikan, like some of the larger southeastern Alaskan towns, has a municipal water system only in the borough itself. Outside of the borough of Ketchikan, individual homes have cisterns filled by rainwater. See the rain gutters from the roof running into the metal cisterns.
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Our campground has a large cistern. The water has a lot of iron oxide. The color of the water is light brown (ugh) and it tastes pretty bad (ugh, ugh). My hair can’t wait for clearer water. One of our errands today was to take several 5 gallon containers to the Ketchikan Waterworks to fill with fresh water. The water spigot had a strange handle. While we were filling the container, I attempted to turn the water off – unfortunately I didn’t get it exactly right and both Robert and I ended up with unexpected showers of very COLD water! Obviously we survived our showers and we are pleased to have some clean water to drink. I’m a bit concerned about what facilities we’ll find in Wrangell, a much smaller town. The only commercial RV park on the island has only 7 sites. That’s a record in smallness for us.
My other project today was to capture a picture of the Aleutian Ballad. Fans of Most Dangerous Catch might recognize the boat from the show. We were told that after a bad experience crabbing on the north seas the captain decided that although he’d make much more money crabbing, he really would prefer to survive. He had the boat retrofitted as a tour boat demonstrating the business of crab fishing.
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Last evening shot of Ketchikan. I took this picture at 10:07 pm.
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off to Wrangell—
more later,
Leslie
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