Sitka
Day 14 June 12, 2012Sitka
It rained off and on all night. And then Walter woke up a little before 7 am having heard something. Next thing I know he is up and putting on his clothes to go check things out. He was gone for a while and when he came back he announced that the campground was open and he thought the best thing to do was drive in, find a spot and then have breakfast. I was cranky about it. There was no reason we had to move now and I was really tired having had in the neighborhood of 4 hours of sleep. But I got up and we went in to find a spot. The campground was nearly empty except for some locals filling their water bottles (as in the large ones that fit on the top of water coolers) at the artesian well in the center of the campground.
We found a nice big spot with not too much tree cover and set up. We had breakfast and then while I got things together for our errands for the day Walter went and registered with the campground host. They make sure you talk to him and clear things by not having the registration envelopes at the pay station. He was a talker so Walter was gone long enough for me to strip the bed, make the grocery list and pull the storage container out from under the bed to bring out the canned and dry goods for the next 15 days. The host said that there were a couple of bears that passed through the park and that the scat we saw as we came in was indeed bear scat and that they eat grass this time of year which is why it looked like horse poop after it was squashed.
Walter set up the trailer while I collected the rest of the laundry. We then sat down to rest and talk about our plan for the day and I nodded off! So I curled up for a nap in amongst the blankets on the stripped bed. I woke up a little while later to find Walter had dozed off in his chair at the table so he joined me as we slept a while longer.
When we woke up it was late enough that we decided to have lunch before we set out. So we had lunch and then programed Carmine the Garmin to take us to the Laundromat. The street address we had for it from the Lonely Planet guide was wrong but after going around the block once we noticed it was across the street from the address they’d given. With a bit of difficulty we found a parking spot and started to work. Note to self, water in Alaska is COLD and doesn’t dissolve powdered detergent. One of my “wash in cold water” t-shirts ended up with a wad of detergent in it because in my fuzzy brained state I’d forgotten to put the detergent in first. The ladies in the Laundromat were kind enough to direct me to a washtub in the back and I rinsed it out in hot water. The washers cost $2 each and the dryers were very cool so that the load I started on delicate might still be drying if I hadn’t turned it up to normal in the end. But we got it all done—3 big loads, washed and dried and folded in less than 2 hours and for under $12.
From there we went across the street to a very snazzy McDonalds to use their free Wi-Fi to check our email, the weather (the promise of good weather for three days has evaporated and it might not rain on Friday now) and do a quick post on FaceBook. Walter bought us each a yogurt fruit parfait for a snack (a little sweet for me but it tasted good) and we ate and played on the computer with this fabulous view of the marina and islands and mountains to the west. I noticed after a while that there were 5 or 6 bald eagles on the rocks along the shore of an inlet by the marina. Fish guts anyone?
Just as we finished there Mt. Edgecomb, the local Mt. Fuji looking dormant volcano peaked up. Lovely. Of course it didn’t stay out long enough for me to get a full photo of it but hey, we saw it! From McDonalds we went to the Sea Market to do our shopping. It’s a very nice grocery store with everything we needed including Brown Cow yogurt and spelt bread. The produce was lovely and not any more expensive than Ketchikan had been for most things except apples which were steeper. But I got grapes and cherries so who cares about apples? Walter got us wine (all alcohol is sold in a separate part of the store in Alaska) and it was about $1.50 more a bottle than the Ketchikan Safeway but it was a better brand so who can tell.
We trundled home and stowed the clothes away (always a challenge when everything is clean) and the food—boy are we full to the gunnels in the pantry. Then we had another nap. Clearly yesterday took a lot out of us both and not having much sleep and then doing a day of chores made for a pair of tired campers.
After dinner, I downloaded my photos and updated this for two days. Walter read about sites in Sitka and the local newspaper he’d bought. He’s now snooziling away and it’s a little after 10.
Tomorrow we will begin our exploration of Sitka in earnest. Hopefully it won’t rain too hard. We will stay one more night here at Starrigavan ($7 a night with a Golden Age Pass) and then move to one of the two places with electrical hookups to recharge and have the luxury of the electric heater in this damp cool place.
Day 15 June 13, 2012
Sitka
We had rain again off and on all night. At about 6 am an air horn started sounding. It went off occasionally for about 10 minutes and I decided they must be using it to scare a bear away. We went back to sleep and it was misting lightly when we got up. Walter went to get some water before breakfast and sure enough, the trash can (with secure lid) as on its side next to the campground host’s site. When we drove out several hours later we noted a large neat pile of bear scat in the road not far from the host’s site.
After breakfast we made a lunch and decided that we’d go down into town and check out the city’s RV Park which has electrical hookups and use the Wi-Fi at the library. The city’s RV Park is a large gravel parking lot with electrical boxes at the nose end of the spots. You’ve got an ocean view out the front but it’s pretty exposed and not beautiful in the rain.
From there we found the library which has its own parking lot. By now the mist had changed to real live heavy rain. I took photos of the large Tlingit canoe by the library and then went in the use the Wi-Fi. My computer refused to connect to either the library’s system or the free Sitka Wi-Fi. For one it said their router needed to be rebooted (when clearly folks were using it) and for the Free Sitka service it said that the node wasn’t working. But the library had free terminals you could use for 20 minutes at a time so we were okay. We checked to see if we needed to get a reservation at the Mendenhall Lake campground in Juneau and we decided it was empty enough and had enough electrical hook ups that were first come first serve that we were okay. We both checked our email via webmail and I posted a quick note on FaceBook and we were done. Of course all that took nearly an hour but meanwhile, my laptop was charging so all was not lost.
I stopped and talked to the librarian and she said that it was an unusually wet spring (2nd or 4th wettest on record I don’t remember which) and she saw no sunshine in the forecast. It was raining pretty hard so we decided we’d drive on out of town and see what was on the south end of the road. A ways out (not that far at all) we came to Whale Park. We stopped since it had mostly stopped raining and read the signs and took the stairs down to the beach level to look out at the view. The whales come here in September but I was hoping to perhaps see sea otters. No luck. The trip back up the stairs was a good workout and added a nice topping to my exercise band workout from this morning. We then walked the boardwalk to all the view points but skipped going down the second set of stairs to the beach at the other end of the park.
From here we drove down to the end of the road hoping to find a good place to have lunch. We passed the new bear center which is a couple of old paper mill tanks and has all the ambience of the recycling center next door (which is also using one of these big old concrete tanks. We came to the end of the pavement and decided to turn around and go back to the wide space in the road we had seen just before the fish processing plant. Walter kindly positioned the truck so we had a nice water view with wispy mist hanging on the mountains across the way and we got out our lunch and ate.
After lunch we looked at the map and decided that since it wasn’t raining much anymore we could go to the Sitka National Historic Site and Totem Park. They were just starting to show their movie when we arrived so we sat down in the theater to watch it. It was a very nice classic National Parks Service movie about the Tlingit, Russian and American history in Sitka. I really enjoyed it. I made a quick turn through the museum and watched some young guys working on carvings in the active artists’ area and then we took the Totem Park trail. It was a great rainforest trail (complete with signs IDing the plants) with totem poles distributed nicely along the trail. Most of the poles are from Haida villages on Prince of Wales Island down by Ketchikan. They were place here to preserve them after they were used in a World’s Fair.
The park marks the historic site of the battle between the Tlingit and the Russians for the possession of Sitka. The Tlingit repelled the Russians to start with and then 2 years later the Russians came back armed with cannon and a pretty good sized army. The Tlingit had a fort which they held for a number of days but when they ran out of gunpowder and flint they made a graceful retreat over the mountains and the Russians moved in to stay. The battle site and the clearing where the fort was are preserved here.
The clouds were starting to lift a bit as we finished our walk and I got another photo of the base of Mt. Edgecombe. One of these days his head will come out of the clouds. At least today the crater next to him was visible.
We met several of our ferry companions today at the Historic Park and stopped to talk with them. One pair told us that they had seen the bear out by our campground in the meadow by the bridge just before you get to the park. Locals had told them that you could see him in the morning, evening and sometimes even in the afternoon.
On the way back from the park, I stopped to take a few more photos from one of the view points and then got a shot of a garden where the gardener has hung a row of blue jeans from the balcony, filled the tops with soil and planted flowers in them. What a riot. When I got to a place where I could take a photo I noticed they had a sign in the yard that said, “Free Slugs, you pick”. I love it. They do have a lot of very black slugs here. Today I saw one with an olive drab head and a black body. Even the banana slugs we’ve seen here are near black.
As we came across the bridge towards the campground I looked out into the meadow and saw a big brown log and wondered aloud if that was the bear. The log moved and I stopped. Walter got out the glasses and sure enough it was a big grizzly with a hump on his back. They call them brown bears here but they will always be grizzlies to me.
We turned into the day-use area of the park and stopped at the estuary-viewing gazebo. That gave us a much closer view of him. I took photos and Walter looked at him with the binoculars. I took a bajillion photos of him with my zoom full on and it looks like a few are at least decent. Hurray for Alaska we’ve seen our first bear!
Tomorrow we will move the trailer to the Sportsman RV Park to have electricity for at least a night. It is another gravel parking lot near the water but it has showers and it’s time to get warm and clean again. Whether we stay there or come back here on Friday night is still up for grabs.
Day 16 June 14, 2012
Sitka
It wasn’t raining when we first got up this morning. But by the time we were having breakfast it was at it again. We decided that it wasn’t raining too hard and maybe it would stop so we drove down to the trailhead for the Mosquito Cove Trail. The gods were smiling on us and the rain stopped. We did the hike in a counterclockwise manner going out to the views of Starrigavan Bay first.
The trail was a little muddy and had LOTS of stairs so we were glad we’d changed into our hiking boots. The stairs were all scored with crisscrosses so they weren’t slippery but many of them were pretty high. It was one of those trails that goes up and down and up and down so we went up and down stairs all along the way to Mosquito Cove. It’s a very pretty little cove with the islands so close that if you didn’t know it was actually sea water it would look like a small lake. I saw my first examples of single delight, a sweet little flower that is only about 4 inches high and nods with its face towards the ground. I also saw my first examples of trailing raspberry. It has a leaf somewhat like a strawberry and it took a while for me to ID it.
Along the trail we saw fresh bear scat but thankfully not the bear. He wasn’t out in the meadow when we checked this morning but clearly he’d been along the trail because someone with big paws had been digging up skunk cabbage to eat the roots. After the hike he still wasn’t out and we went back to the trailer to prepare to move to Sportsman’s RV Park for the night so we could have power to warm up, showers AND Wi-Fi. As we crossed the bridge out across the estuary who should we see out in the meadow but Mr. Bear. So we turned around in the Sitka Historic Site (a parking lot with signs about the original Russian settlement there) and went back for a few more shots of the bear. He was closer to the creek this time but still pretty far away. They had the trail that runs along that side of the estuary closed for obvious reasons so you really couldn’t get closer. We talked for a few minutes with a couple who were taking photos. He was in the Coast Guard and they were stationed here for 3 years (just finishing their first year). She was originally from Louisiana and now that their kids were grown and married she’d agreed to spend a tour with him in Alaska. Mr. Bear was their first bear sighting from land—they’d seen several along the beaches from their boat.
We set up camp at Sportsman and had lunch. Sportsman’s RV Park is basically a gravel parking lot right next to the road with a bit of an ocean view. It has hot showers in warm bathrooms, good Wi-Fi and full hooks ups plus a dump station, all for $26.50 (tax included). They take plastic and you can make a reservation on-line if you want to. It has all the ambience of a parking lot but power is a wonderful thing and so are hot showers! And their Wi-Fi works just fine.
After lunch we decided to go into town to finish our historical sight-seeing even though it was raining. By the time we got to town it had mostly stopped again. We visited the Bishop’s House which is one of only 4 surviving buildings from the Russian era. The National Park Service restored it and you can tour the first floor and watch the video about the second floor for free. They charge $4 for the tour of the second floor where they’ve restored the furnishings to 1850’s period. Since we’d seen the video neither of us felt the need to go upstairs.
From there we went to take photos of St. Michael’s Cathedral, the Russian Orthodox Church that sits in the middle of the street in the downtown heart of Sitka. It burned down a number of years ago and has been completely rebuilt. We wandered through a little mall and then on down to the Pioneer Home, a big building with nice gardens that was built in 1939 to house elderly pioneers. There are still 100 retirees living in the place. I took photos of HUGE tall blue poppies in their garden. I’ve never seen them look so happy or so big. I also took photos of the wonderful sourdough statue—an 1898 miner complete with pack and gold pan.
We stopped and reconnoitered trying to find our way to Castle Hill. The map neglected to mark the trail and staircase entries to the hill and we of course missed the stairs and had to walk ¾ of the way around the hill before we found the trail up. It was a nice paved trail with a gentle incline that takes you to great views of both Sitka itself and Sitka Sound, including a cool private lighthouse. Castle Hill was the site of the original Tlingit village and later had a Russian Fort and then a Russian administrator’s house (very fancy and thus called The Castle) on it. It’s here that the Russians turned over ownership of Alaska to the Americans.
It had started to rain lightly by the time we were done here and we made our way back to the truck ready to go back to the trailer for a nap and a shower. The trailer was a lovely 70 degrees when we returned—hurray for electric heaters! After a nice nap we got our gear together and each had our own bathroom to ourselves for hot showers. The water was hot but the shower rooms aren’t classy—bare concrete floors that looked none to clean. But the doors lock and the showers are free and have unlimited hot water.
I processed the photos of the bear (almost all are a little fuzzy because of the distance) and uploaded the best to FaceBook since I’d made mention of seeing him in my post earlier in the day and Julie was already asking where they were.
After dinner I downloaded and labeled my photos (which requires flower ID) from today and now I’ve updated this. We may stay here tomorrow night or move to the municipal RV Parking Lot down by the Airport tomorrow. They don’t have showers but we won’t need them and it is $5 cheaper.
The weatherman has taken the promised partly cloudy day out of the forecast for tomorrow and replaced it with another day like today—50 degrees and 60% chance of rain. Most of the day both today and yesterday it was 47 degrees but it felt warmer today when we were hiking.
Day 17 June 15, 2012
Sitka
We awoke to wonders of wonders, sun breaks! They were the five minute variety but hey, it’s a whole lot better than rain. We looked at the hiking options available to us and opted to take the risk of a ‘moderate’ hike with steep gravel to Beaver Lake. Having decided that, we also decided to stay another night at Sportman’s RV Park so that we wouldn’t have to spend the time moving this morning when the weather was nice.
We got our gear together and headed south towards the trailhead which is of course at the far end if Sawmill Road (the road the runs south out of town). We stopped at a viewpoint along the way to take photos since Mt. Edgecombe (the local volcano that looks a lot like Mt. Fuji) was out in all his glory.
The road to the trailhead splits off of Sawmill Road just before the old pulp mill that now has the bear view place in it. A steep gravel road climbs towards Sawmill Campground and the town’s hydroelectric plant. I noticed a couple of juvenile eagles sitting in the trees overlooking the tanks where the bears live as we drove by and wondered if they were waiting for feeding time.
The road is your classic Forest Service gravel road—potholes here and then and about 1 ½ lanes wide. It wasn’t as good as the 3 Lakes Loop Road that we took at Petersburg but it wasn’t bad. It climbed steeply through the forest until we began to see avalanche chutes still full of snow and waterfalls cascading down the steep chutes above the snow. We were following power poles and both of us wondered why in the world they’d runs poles out that way. And then it dawned on us, they might have hydro out this way. Sure enough we came to a sign telling us about the hydro project at Blue Lake that you could go see by taking the left spur of the road. Instead, we opted to take the right spur down through the Sawmill Campground and to the trailhead for the Beaver Lake Trail. We put on our boots, got out our hiking sticks (one each) and got ready to hike. I of course had to take photos of the falls before we started and we both had to cinch up our hats since the wind was really blowing and threatening to take our hats with it.
Once we’d gotten across the nifty bridge built in 2010 and into the woods the wind died away and the trail began to climb. The trail was not only steep gravel it had lots of both wood and stone stairs. It went up and up and then around a few switch backs and up some more. A trail crew had been through in the last day or so and had macheted the trail edges so there were many flowers to look at. But it did widen the trail some. The other thing that was interesting is that there were no ruts in the trail from water running down it even when it was at its steepest.
Every once in a while the trees would part and we’d get another view of the waterfalls. After gaining a good 500 feet in elevation if not more, the trail began to level out and we entered a high muskeg bog. There were purple shooting stars in bloom and a lot of little white flowers called gold thread and of course lots of tiny bunchberries.
We crossed some creeks over some very nicely made yellow cedar bridges and came at last to Beaver Lake. We had passed a couple of hikers on the way and assumed that they must have been camping down at the campground since our truck was the only vehicle in the parking lot. But then we met another pair of hikers who were coming along the lakeside trail and heading around like they were making an extra lap around the lake. We mentioned this to them and they said no, they’d started at the trailhead over at Herring Cove where Sawmill Road ends (it becomes gravel at the old pulp mill and we’d turned back there a few days ago so we never got to Herring Cove). They said that theirs was the newer of the trails and didn’t have so many switchbacks. Ah well, we couldn’t go down that way since our truck was at the other trailhead so you just live and learn. Note to anyone reading this, try the Herring Cove trailhead it’s the one the locals use.
We stopped and rested sitting on a bench and watched a lone bald eagle soar along the length of the lake. Then we hiked on the narrow boardwalk about ¼ of the way around the lake (counterclockwise) so I could see the whole lake and get a good photo of the mountains that surround it.
It’s very pretty lake and a hike that I’d recommend. Needless to say coming down was much quicker than going up. I’m happy to say that my knee didn’t give me any trouble at all going down all those steep stairs or the steep trail. This trail was most definitely the steepest trail we’ve done since our accident and neither of us is feeling any ill effects. Hurray for the results of working out 6 days a week!
On the way down I managed to get a decent photo of three-leaved-foam flower. I’d tried yesterday and the camera insisted on focusing on the leaves rather than the flowers. Today, I had success. I also got a nice shot of a strange little plant that I’ve decided is probably a Sitka Spruce seedling—very fun.
We were happy to get back to the truck and sit down when we were done but neither of us was exhausted or hurting. This is good news. We drove down the Forest Service Road and just before we joined the highway noticed a car pulled over and a group of ladies taking photos just above the bear tanks. We looked up above them to see the trees full of eagles. Walter counted 16 of them. I got out to take photos and realized that you could see the bears down below in their tanks. So I went and got Walter and we had a great time watching the bears since it turns out both of them were in the same viewing area.
We stopped at the turn out where we had lunch on Wednesday so I could take a photo of it without the fog and then motored on to the Sea Mart grocery to pick up a few things. The view of Mt. Edgecombe from their parking lot was outstanding so I of course had to take photos there too.
We got home in time to see the fast ferry the Fairweather departing from the ferry dock next door. It has the body of a catamaran (two thin supports on each side in the water and the main boat arched above that. It turned around and nearly spun on a dime doing it and then motored out into the Sitka Sound. I took a photo of it since we’ll be taking it tomorrow.
I made us lunch while Walter checked the email and it began to spit a little bit of rain. After lunch Walter checked the air in the trailer tires and filled our water tank. I’ve downloaded photos and updated this while Walter read me interesting bits of things from the newspapers he picked up at the store. Now he’s having nap.
We’re both tired enough that I doubt we’ll go back out into the rain any more today. All that’s left are museums and that kind of walking seems to be the hardest on us. Tomorrow we get in line at the ferry at noon for a 1:00 pm sailing. Loading should be simple since the boat should be empty and everyone is either going to Angoon, the small native village where we’ll stop on the way, or Juneau.
Late in the afternoon Walter got restless and we took a drive out to see if Mr. Bear was out in the estuary. He wasn't but we took a drive through the campground and filled one of our water jugs with artesian well water which is very nice tasting indeed. The artesian taps in the campground only produce water at about ½ gallon a minute maybe less—slow enough so Walter got back in the truck and I sat and watched it fill and he got back out when I told him it was ¾ full and he still got there before it overflowed.
Then we drove out the road that goes along the side of the estuary out to the shooting range. Still no signs of the bear. Ah well, we're lucky we got to see him two days in a row.
It's raining pretty hard now and the forecast is for rain all day tomorrow and tomorrow night.
Tomorrow we get in line at the ferry at noon for a 1:00 pm sailing. Loading should be simple since the boat should be empty and everyone is either going to Angoon, the small native village where we’ll stop on the way, or Juneau.
Day 18 June 16, 2012
Sitka to Juneau
We decided to just hang out and enjoy the morning at a slow pace before heading to the ferry dock for check-in at noon. Then I decided to finally take off the last of the transit shield since the mud that had accumulated in the wrinkles was worrying me along with the patch of adhesive that hadn’t come off when we pulled off the last of the lower section. The top three sections came off just fine and didn’t leave any adhesive behind but the mud has discolored the finish a little bit. I washed the front of the trailer and sprayed it with Simple Green but that didn’t take off the stains. I tried a little Comet on it and that didn’t work either. It’s not real noticeable and I can hope that it will fade with time. Rinsing off the trailer was fun because the hose wasn’t long enough to reach the front of the trailer. Instead I filled the bucket with water and threw it at the trailer. Needless to say I got pretty wet in the end.
While I was at it I washed the back end of the truck too since I’d been getting dirty every time I tried to get anything out of the back end of the truck. I ended up having to rewash the rear window of the canopy because it didn’t rinse off too well.
Meanwhile we got to watch the folks at the Sportsman’s Club shoot skeet out into the sound. They didn’t start until after 10 am which was nice of them but they kept at it for quite a while. After that we made lunch to take with us on the ferry and packed up the computer and the Kindles and Walter’s map of the Inside Passage so we were ready to once they loaded up on the ferry. Just as we were getting ready to leave there was a knock on our door (a very unusual occurrence). It was a fellow who had once upon a time (1999 or 2000) owned a Casita, just stopping by to say hello. He said you rarely saw them up north and he’d love his. We talked trailer for a while and then it was time to use the Sportsman’s dump station.
It looked great with a nice hose at the water spigot and everything. But the dump point was a little far so you HAD to stand on the dump hose to keep it from escaping out of the dump hole and then it turned out that the faucet didn’t produce any water. Punt time. I got to walk across the campground to get water in the bucket and drag it back to the rig 3 times. But we got it done with no problem.
The ferry dock is just a little ways down the road (as in ¼ of a mile or so) from the campground and we were there with plenty of time to spare. I checked in and they put is at the front of the line in lane 5. We parked and sat in the truck and waited. I read and Walter watched the festivities. There were lots of walk-on passengers because there were kids from the Sitka Arts Camp going home after their week there. And there were a number of vehicles going to Angoon too. It looked foggy out in the sound and the straits and the ferry was late. In fact it didn’t even arrive until 1:30 and we were supposed to have departed at 1:00.
They loaded us second and put us directly behind the folks who were already on board to go to Angoon. We thought this meant we’d be first off when we got to Juneau since they load these ferries from the side and unload them from the front when they get to Juneau. Ha! Little did we know…
We got our stuff out of the trailer and found the stairs to the passenger deck. Our stairs brought you up right into the snack bar area which has a very fancy inlaid floor. We went up front to the passenger lounge which has airline-style lounge chairs (i.e. they recline a big) but the front row was full. So we took a pair of seats on the left side in the second row. There was a power outlet in the first row and I asked if I could use it and they guy there said yes. So I was good to go to work on my processing photos when visibility outside went down.
The odd thing about this ferry is that you can’t go out on deck on either the front or the sides—only the rear deck is open and that’s where the smokers are. So you have to take photos through the glass at the front or sides or out the back. I took photos a few times out the back once but most of my photos were out the windows. Once it started to rain (about an hour out or so) they didn’t work since the camera insists on focusing on the rain drops so I mostly gave up on taking photos and worked on my old ones.
We got to Angoon at about 4:30. The only part of the village we could see was a cluster of houses on the island that is opposite the ferry terminal. Some face out into the straits and some face into the quiet little harbor there. A whole lot of foot passengers got off and Angoon plus a number of cars. And then they loaded a number of cars plus a big truck and a flat-bed trailer. The truck and the trailer had to be backed down into the hold. And guess where the flat bed ended up? They parked it right in front of us.
After the Angoon folks got off there were seats available in the front row so we moved up and over to a pair of seats in the middle section. The windows were wet but it was still fun to watch the mountains come and go and to talk to the people from Juneau who sat next to us who actually had some idea of where we were. As we came into the Auk Bay area you could see the Mendenhall Glacier in the distance. At first I thought it was low lying fog but the Juneau folks said no, that blue-gray area was the glacier.
They go very slow into the docking area so it was quite a while before we docked and they got tied up. We went down to the trailer and put our stuff quickly into the trailer thinking we’d be unloading right away. And then we noticed the flat-bed trailer sitting there with no truck attached. And nobody was coming to haul it away. Meanwhile they unloaded everyone else, including the folks behind us. Finally, a smiling ferry person came to us and told us we needed to back up just a bit so we could pull over and around the flat bed. We were the last vehicle off the ferry.
I’d programed Carmine the Garmin with the latitude and longitude info for the campground and glory be she took us right there! It was raining pretty hard but it was still light when we got to the campground at about 8:20. We drove the RV loop and decided on a spot and set up. We’d stopped and gotten a registration envelope on the way in so we just had to fill it out and then go back and deposit it. The spot we were in is a reservation spot that said it was open. We didn’t know if we’d be able to stay for our full time or not but we thought our chances were good because the reservation system requires that you make reservations at least 3 days in advance.
I started dinner at 8:45 and we ate chips (yam and beet chips I’d bought on a whim in Sitka) while we waited. We talked about options for things to do while we were here and made a list of errands that we needed to do. Our first tank of propane was empty (all those hours of running the furnace had used up quite a bit) and we needed to find a hardware store for some goof-off to get the adhesive off from the transit shield and we needed a new toilet paper holder because the original one in the trailer bit it on Friday.
To continue on to Juneau with us click here to go to Part 4 of my blog.