Kickin' it in Ketchikan

Greetings from Ketchikan! Our favorite town thus far...We've paddled a little over 400 miles in just over a month, and we're a third of the way done with our trip (and on time too boot)! Craazy! This is our last stop in Alaska before crossing the border (in a few days) into Canada. Here are a some highlights from the past week:

We enjoyed a few days in the tiny town of Wrangell. Things were stressful for a bit since every hotel/motel/B&B in town was booked (due to construction--heh), but we ended up setting up shop at the hostel run by the Presbyterian Church. We were forced into relaxation for a day since the whole town shuts down on Sundays (including grocery stores), but managed to run all of our errands and get resupplied in due time. I even got to have a pre-birthday fried feast, complete with a requisite Manhattan, before heading out of town on a foggy, misty morning.

Our first few days out were in very protected waters, which made for pretty easy paddling--low mileage, early mornings to catch favorable currents, mostly calm water, and a little rain here and there. After rounding the corner where Ernest Sound meets Clarence Strait, on the western side of the Cleveland Peninsula, things got a little more interesting. The Clarence Strait section of the paddle was full of firsts:

Our First Small Craft Advisory: Two of them actually! The first provided a welcome opportunity to sleep in until the advisory was lifted, the second led us to...

...Our First Weather Day: According to our guide book, Clarence Strait is "not bedeviled by stormy seas," and yet there we were, looking at frothy, 3 to 4-foot whitecaps racing into the rocks that we were camped above. Clarence Strait is long and wide, and even 10-15 knot winds over that much fetch could build up impressive waves. We probably could have paddled, but we certainly wouldn't have gotten anywhere with any kind of efficiency. The idea of packing up camp to spend a lot of energy paddling nowhere just didn't seem worth it. So we stayed put for a day, feeling a little annoyed, but glad to have whiskey. It was at this campsite, the night before our weather day that we had...

...Our First Bear Near Our Campsite Encounter: We had stopped at that site the afternoon before, to get out of the building wind, realized it wasn't going to abate, and decided to camp. We had just started making dinner when Mike stood up to to stretch.
Mike: "Oh. There's a bear."
Kelly (busily slicing cheese and swatting at bugs): "Huh?"
Mike: "There's a bear right there."
Kelly (turning to look, and noticing a black bear, about 30 yards away, ambling

along the beach, turning over rocks and digging for tasty morsels): "...Oh...yeah..."

It was about time, really. A month of camping in bear country without running into one (we had seen them from our kayaks) seemed to be pushing our luck. Mr. Bear hadn't noticed us at all, and it would've been pretty cool to just sit and watch it do it's thing if it weren't for the fact that it was making its way toward where we were cooking. We stood up, waved our arms, and loudly announced ourselves. The bear looked up in surprise, turned away, looked back, then scampered off into the woods. I felt a little bad for interrupting its beachcombing. We congratulated ourselves on our bear-scaring abilities, moved our kitchen to a different part of the beach, and went to bed knowing that at least the bear knew we were there and didn't really want much to do with us. Good thing, too, since we had to spend a second night...

The weather still wasn't super awesome after that, as the weather front continued to stall out. The next day we only managed 10 miles before the wind drove us off the water. With another (stronger) front forecasted to move in, we took advantage of a tiny window of early morning calm to make our way out of the Strait and across the 5-mile-wide Behm Canal. The last 10 miles down Tongass Narrows to Ketchikan was full of wind, chop, and developed waterfront. Finally, after 21-miles and a 13-hour day, we made it! We had our easiest docking/accomodation finding/gear moving yet, and now we're kickin' it in the beautiful New York Hotel, right at the entrance to Creek Street. Today was spent running errands, and tomorrow we get to play tourist.

Oh yeah, and I turned 27! Thanks for all the birthday wishes, everyone! It was a great day, and a humpback even popped by to say hell0.

Pictures!

Here are pictures from both the Juneau to Wrangell and Wrangell to Ketchikan leg. They are in no specific order (it is hard to organize pictures on this website). We will follow soon with a worded update about the last leg of our trip, it is just easier to do an all picture post and an all word post separately.

Pushing the tram with all of our stuff across the mile long portage to Fool's Inlet

Dragging, lifting and floating our boats trying to beat the dried out high tide to get out of Fool's Inlet

Rocky coastline

Heading to retrieve the tram on the portage

Us

More coastline

Black bear, just near where we wanted to camp...

Sunset on "Porcupine Island", named so because Kelly saw a porcupine on the beach

Watching humpbacks put on a show in the 5 1/2 mile crossing of Stephen's Passage that we completed the next morning

Coming into Wrangell, you can see the divide between water coming out of the Stikine river (the lighter color because of all the sediment) and the water coming out of the back passage

Rockweed and waves enough to take a rest day

Getting into Ketchikan, cruise ships are biiiiiigggggg

View of Ketchikan from our window in the historic New York Hotel

Bull Kelp, clouds and calm water

Juneau to Wrangell

Hey everyone, this is going to be a super short and picture-less update. (Sorry!) We don't have very much time (in general and specifically for internet use).

Here is a short summary of the last couple weeks:

We spent 4 wonderful nights in Juneau running errands, relaxing, eating a lot, and hanging out with Bryce and Emily. We woke up very early to leave Juneau and paddled a good 15 nm capped off with a mile long (not super easy) tramway portage. It was a long day and a long start to our next leg. We then spent a few days paddling down Admiralty Island with wonderful weather and light winds. Admiralty has the largest concentration of Grizzleys (1 per square mile) and Eagles. We saw only two bears there and luckily they were not in our campsites. We made it across Stephen's Passage which was one of our scariest, longest, open crossings (about 5 and a half miles) and we came real close to a cruise ship. Then we spent quite a few more days of wonderful weather and very long paddling distances (between 15-20 nautical miles per day) to make it here to Wrangell. Oh and we came real close (like 20 feet away) from some humpbacks.

We have about 7 days (assuming decent wind and currents) till we make it to Ketchikan and can hopefully put up a little more info.

Wildlife everywhere

It is still astonishing to me just how much marine wildlife we have seen in the last two weeks of paddling. Glacier Bay National Park is home to humpbacks, harbor porpoises, stellar sea lions, harbor seals, sea otters, bald eagles, tons of different shore birds, and of course bears (both black and brown). And except for the bears we saw A LOT of them all. These are some of our more interesting animal interactions from the first leg of our trip.

Bears

The very first day of paddling (within the first two hours) we saw a momma bear and her cub. We were drifting along in the early morning calm after just rushing to make "the cut", a small channel that is only passable at high tide, to get into a small, protected group of islands. I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Something large and brown and running. No, not running, sprinting. Out from behind a large boulder they came, a large mother black bear and her cub. They were covering ground very fast and paid no mind to us in our boats. They lumbered into the water and very speedily swam in front of us across a channel to a neighboring island. Once across they noticed us and gave us a once over before disappearing into the trees. The ranger later told me that usually when you see black bears running fast like that it is because they are getting away from a grizzly. We have yet to see another bear.

Sea Lions, Otters, and Seals

One sunny, calm day (the fourth or fifth) when we were near the end of a fifteen mile paddle, we accidentally cut off a trio of hunting sea lions. We were wearily paddling along when all of a sudden a HUGE sea lion leaped out of the water, completely out of the water, and with a hefty salmon in his maw, as if in slow motion, looked at Kelly in her boat, dropped his jaw (and his fish) in shock and splash landed leaving an enterprising eagle to swoop out the neglected fish. We were startled and fairly frightened. So we started paddling harder toward our destination. Just when I thought that I could slow down and stop to take a glance behind me they all popped up literally feet from the side of my boat. "JESUS!" I exclamed loudly. "SNORT! HUFF!" they announced back and dipped back under. That happened several more times as they followed us and kept checking us out (and scaring the crap out of us) everytime we stopped.

Since that slightly alarming experience we have seen tons of troupes of them. Always curious and in packs. They are showy and cocky, they are the the Jersey Shore of the marine mammal world. Whereas we also saw sea otters everywhere. They are soooooo cute, lying on their backs, clapping their rocks together, eating shellfish and hugging their little otter babies. A little too cute, and they know it. They give off a feel of "look at me! look at me! I'm soooooo cute". Then there are the harbor seals, probably my favorite. They are cute but discrete about it. Sleek and solitary, the unsung heroes.

Humpback Whales

They were everywhere in Glacier Bay and because it was so calm and there weren't very many motorized vehicles you could hear them exhaling from all around you. We haven't had any super close interactions with them. We have seen them spy hopping, breaching, and doing this crazy tail slapping.


Black Oyster Catchers

I didn't think I would every be anywhere where the predominant large black noisy bird is not a crow but a black oyster catcher. They were everywhere we wanted to camp. We would pull up to a beach and one of them (they are always in pairs) would start squaking its head off telling the whole world we were there while the other would duck it's head down and stalk around trying to not be seen. They are cute but very territorial.

Glacier Bay to Juneau: Complete!

Greetings from Juneau, Alaska! After a 3-day ferry ride and 13 nights of camping, the longest leg of our trip is complete! For a while there it seemed like the universe was against us and that we were never going to make it, but we did. We even did it on time. Even though it's only been two weeks we have SO much to share and write about. But not a whole lot of time to do it. So here are some highlights! Stay tuned for more...

Although it started out as a slight logistical nightmare, the ferry from Bellingham to Juneau (and eventually to Gustavus) was lovely and relaxing. We got a pretty sweet tent spot on the back deck that was neither windy nor wet, and it was nice having time to relax and do not much of anything after spending lots of time running around getting things ready. It was also a great opportunity to do some scouting of the places we'd be paddling, and it definitely gave us some things to look forward to on the paddle back down.

Setting up our tent on the ferry in Bellingham.

A second ferry, a taxi van, a frezied grocery store run, and our first successful general delivery pick-up got us to Bartlett Cove, and from there our 7 nights in Glacier Bay were a paddle in the park (literally and figuratively)! The weather was wonderful (it was HOT!), the water was calm, and the scenery and wildlife was epically stunning. We were definitely spoiled by our good fortune for the first few days of the trip. The calm conditions allowed us to get in shape and work out our daily routine without the added stress of bad weather.

Morning at our firt campsite in the Beardslee Islands, Glacier Bay






A beautiful afternoon at Sturgis Island. Riggs Glacier is waaaayy in the background.

We had initially planned to paddle up to John Muir Glacier, in the east arm of the bay, but had heard that it wasn't really worth the long paddle to get there. Instead, the farthest north we got was McBride Glacier. We spent a day paddling past mini ice bergs as we approached the tidewater glacier. Once we arrived, we spent a few minutes admiring the ice until we were numb from the cold, congratulated ourselves on reaching the northernmost point of our trip, then hopped back in the boats and started heading south!

McBride Glacier

Enjoying cribbage, sunshine, and nearby humpbacks on a fine evening in Glacier Bay

Eventually it came time to leave lovely Glacier Bay and enter the "real world" of more exposed waters and worse conditons. Our 5am departure from Bartett Cove was met with headwind, whitecaps, and a tide rips as we rounded the Point Gustavus heading out into Icy Strait. And that's pretty much how the 7 days of paddling to Junea have been. Every day has involved some kind of battle against less-than-favorable conditions, and it was all capped off by a 6 mile paddle into 25 knot gusts as we headed into Juneau down the Gastineau Channel. It felt a little absurd fighting hard to gain a foot of progress while traffic on a busy highway whizzed by next to us, but our hard work paid off and we MADE IT! Celebratory beer, showers, and sleep followed.

Our campsite on a granite ledge on the Mansfield Peninsula, after crossing the Lynn Canal.