Here's a map of Petersburg and the rest of Mitkof Island so you know where the heck we are.
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We took much of that day off to recharge our batteries but late in the afternoon we decided we’d drive south on the highway and see what we could see. There was a forest service campground down near the end of the road where we could stay if there were things we wanted to do down there so we decided to drive down and check it out.
Among the interesting things we found was a brand new ferry terminal that wasn’t being used. It turns out that the Alaskan Ferry System opened up a run between the south end of Mitkof Island and Wrangell but not enough people rode it to make it feasible so they shut it down. Their parking lot made a great viewpoint though. To start with we thought that this body of water was the Wrangell Narrows. But we were wrong, it was the south section of Blind Slough. Those mountains are the Sumner Mountains and are between us and the Narrows. While I was taking photos here I heard an eerie haahoo call out on the water and realized that it was probably a loon. I’ve been wanting to hear one for years and was very excited to hear one at last.
Here's a panorama shot. That's a whole lot of fancy ferry dock just sitting there.
We stopped and explored the campground which was empty and very nice. If we’d found more to do down that way we would have stayed there. I found bog laurel (Kalmia polifolia) growing in the meadow as we drove into the campground. The next day we saw tons of this growing in the muskeg bogs that we visited.
We continued on down to the end of the island to a big boat launching area and watched folks launch their boats to go fishing. The road turned to dirt and there was construction ahead so we turned around. Just after we turned around I spotted this bald eagle sitting in the tree overhanging the road.
Then just before we got back to our campground we spotted a Sitka black-tailed doe in the road. We slowed down and realized that she had a VERY young fawn with her. I started taking pictures out the truck window right away.
Initially the doe took off down the bank but the silly little fawn didn’t follow her.
Instead she turned toward us as we slowly drove ahead. In the end, she was right outside the truck side window.
She was still unsteady on her feet and kept getting entangled in her own legs. We figure she wasn’t more than a day old at the most. When we started to drive away she followed us but Mom finally got her attention and she went off into the ditch and back into safety.
The next day we had sun! We went for a hike at Blind River Rapids. There were great views of the mountains to the south from the trailhead parking lot.
And from the trail that the wound over an elevated boardwalk through the muskeg bog.
Muskeg is sphagnum moss peat bog. It’s very wet and the trees that grow in it are all stunted. There were open sections where you could see the rich dark peat color and all the water was tinted dark brown by the peat.
There were lots of flowers growing in the bog including Labrador Tea (Ledum groenlandicum), a small shrub with sweet smelling flowers.
There also lots and lots of these star flowers (Trientalis europea) which I continued to see growing in wet places for the rest of the day.
The trail took you out to a view of the Blind River Rapids. There was a nice little riffle and we saw fish jump. On examination we decided they were young salmon making their way out to sea since there’s a fish hatchery upstream from here.
And here’s a panorama shot of the river. We saw the fish jumping just this side of the riffle..
Here’s the view from the shoreline of the river looking south.
One of the interesting things we learned here is that there are no Western Red Cedars growing north of about this point on the island. We saw a lot of them in Ketchikan but we saw very few here and didn’t see any more as we went north. They were replaced with Alaskan Yellow Cedars.
The day before we’d stopped at Blind Slough Recreation Area to check it out and I’d noticed this wonderful big patch of lupine (Lupinus arcticus). We stopped today so I could get a photo of it. There were lupine growing all along the roadsides in Petersburg but these were the lushest and tallest we saw.
The slough was mirror-still and I couldn’t resist taking some reflection shots.
The bridge in this photo leads over to the fish hatchery.
From here we drove back into Petersburg itself looking for a place for a picnic lunch. We ended up at the aptly named Sandy Beach which faces east towards the mainland.
As you can see, the tide was out and there were families out playing on the beach in their “Petersburg sneakers” as rubber boots are known. The little boy’s overalls are a rubber boot and rubber overall combo.
After lunch we drove back north to Overlook Park where you’re supposed to be able to see whales. We didn’t see any but the view was wonderful.
We followed the coastal road back towards town and stopped at Eagles Roost—no eagles. But the view across the bay to Kupreanof Island to the north was good and we got to watch fishing boats come back into the strait.
We then actually went into town itself and found a bookstore so I could buy a flower ID book that would cover all these strange and interesting flowers I was seeing. While we were at it we visited the Sons of Norway Hall with it’s wonderful rosemaled shutters.
Jammed into the small area next to the Sons of Norway Hall is the Valhalla, a Viking ship reproduction and a memorial to lost seaman.
There are memorial placques all long the railing of this area.
We drove back to the campground via Frederick Drive which became a dirt road called Frederick Road and finally became a Forest Service Road that took us up over the spine of the island and down back to our campground.
There were great views and as we went south we began to see ice bergs floating in the water in the distance. That’s what those white things along the far shoreline are. We’d seen a few further north but since they were so far way we thought they might be little boats or buoys. But when they got thick like this we knew they were the real deal.
LeConte Glacier is due east of the middle of Mitkof Island. It is the southernmost tidewater glacier in North America. Being a tidewater glacier means that it spills out into the ocean, calving ice bergs as it flows. Seeing all the ice bergs motivated us to find out where the one view point on the island was so we could see it. It was getting late though and we were pretty sure it was on yet a different road so we headed back to our campground instead.
I grabbed one last photo in the sun of the mountains to the south as we came to the top of the ridge.
In Part VIII, we’ll take you on the Three Lakes Drive where we did get a glimpse of LeConte Glacier and then we’ll move on to Sitka.