THE ALASKAN ADVENTURE Day 87 & 88 August 11 & 12, 2009 Petersburg, AK

Today is our last day in Petersburg and it is raining. So we had a leisurely breakfast and took our time checking out of the RV Park. Once we were on the road we headed into town and the public library to check email. We then went for a walk around town and found ourselves at the museum. We spent some time there learning about the early days of Petersburg and how they have handled the commercial fishing in the area. The area is quite prosperous compared to most of the other fishing towns we have been in.

After the museum we stocked up on a few groceries and headed out to Blind River Rapids again and had supper. The reason for going there was that we wanted to hike back down to the river a little later to see if there were any bears around. When we got there we saw one bear on the other side of the river and we sat and watched him for awhile.


I know, it's an ugly picture. Thats what happens when you are trying to take a picture as you run away.





We didn’t stay for very long for two reasons, one it was getting dark and secondly the bugs were starting to get really bad. So we walked back to the camper, packed up and headed for the ferry terminal. Our ferry is scheduled to leave at 2AM and we have to be there for midnight. We actually got there about nine o’clock and went to bed but not before setting the alarm.

The ferry rolled in about 1:30 PM and they started loading. Once we were loaded and on our way Kathy headed for the recliner lounge to go to sleep and I headed for the forward observation room. The route we were following to get to Wrangell was through the Wrangell Narrows. The narrows are 22 miles long and take almost 4 hours to get through as in some spots it is barely wide enough for the ferry. Cruise ships cannot get through. I wanted to watch them navigate the narrows just using the lights. It was pretty amazing to see all the red and green running up and down the channel. It’s a good thing they know what they are doing as I could not make heads or tails of what the lights meant. I watched for awhile and they it started to fog over and I couldn’t even see the lights so I joined Kathy in the recliner lounge and went to sleep.

We arrived in Wrangell around 6:30AM and immediately after leaving the boat we headed out to Nemo Point National Park found a place to park and crawled into bed to catch up on our sleep.
When we finally arose and got going for the day we headed for town and the visitor information center and got a map of the area that showed all the forestry roads and campsites.

After leaving downtown our first stop was at Petroglyph Beach. The Beach is a unique cultural resource and is home to more than 40 petroglyphs. They are the largest concentration of rock in the Southeast and are thought to date back 8,000 years. Nobody seems to know exactly what they say or represent.

After leaving the beach we headed out on one of the old forestry roads. We just drove around and enjoyed the scenery.

We finally settled in for the night at East West Cove which is on the other side of Wrangell Island from the town site. We set up the camper, had supper and spent the rest of the evening enjoying the sunset.