Loading at Wrangell

Leslie Wednesday, June 11, 2008

I wanted to show what a small campground looks like. There are seven sites here.

AlaskaWaters campground
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Dungess crab season opens on June 14th so throughout town people are working on preparing their crab pots. I watched a young man work on their pots across from our campsite for two complete days. He attached the buoy and coiled the line to each pot.

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Today was moving day. We boarded the ferry Matanuska bound for Petersburg. This is a shorter ferry ride, only three hours.

Here is the Matanuska arriving at Wrangell.

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Because our rig is so long, we were again to be the last to load. I had wanted to capture some pictures of the loading process but it’s tough to be in several places at once.

The first few pictures I took through the windshield as we drove down the ramp. Notice the man at the bottom of the ramp giving directions. The ferry has three of four people watching each side of the rig. The ferry workers want the driver to follow their directions, "Don’t look in your mirrors! I am your eyes," commanded the men giving directions.

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Notice the door open on the ocean side of the ferry. Our rig will be positioned between the port and starboard doors.

Here we are in position. The truck’s nose is at the starboard door, the rig’s end is at the port door. The third picture is my check to make sure we’re really all on board.

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The next picture was taken by someone we met in the campground a few days ago. I was talking with this man on board the ferry and he showed me a picture on his camera of our rig loading. Later we ended up in the same campground in Petersburg and he shared his pictures with us.

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Off-loading in Petersburg was even more exciting. The ramp has a steep incline and our tires were slipping trying to drive up. Eventually they had us back down the ramp and take a running start to get up the ramp. There was a crowd of people watching this spectacle. When we made it up the ramp, a huge cheer erupted.

We had made campground reservations for each small town on our ferry route. When we arrived at the Tonka View Rv park, it was a dump. Really, it was the absolute worst RV park we have ever seen. The facility was occupied by mostly run-down permanent units. There were two sites available for transients. We couldn’t get in to the site where we were assigned because someone had left a pickup truck blocking the front. The manager was nasty. The second site she offered had dog feces around the sewer connection. We decided to move on down the road. The Alaskan Camping book by Mike & Terri Church that we follow had one other RV park listed that would accommodate a rig our size. We set up in the Twin Creek RV Park. Twin Creek is fine. Shortly after we got set up, the people who were camped next to us for the past few days showed up. This is the couple who had taken our picture as we loaded in Wrangell. They set up next to us and later invited me over to copy the pictures they had taken.
We also talked cameras for awhile -- more techno-toys.

We ended the day with dinner at the only restaurant in Petersburg, Rooney’s Northen Lights Restaurant. It is in the middle dock. Robert feasted on fresh steamed shrimp. He reports that the shrimp were wonderful.
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