Ketchikantastic

 This was the day we would finally arrive in Ketchikan. I was so excited! Anything had to be better than Prince Rupert.

Holding everyone up because we had to wait so long. 

We were among the first to arrive at the ferry station. Recommended to show up by 1030, we were checking in at 1000. And for the next two hours, we basically sat roasting in our car waiting to get loaded into the ferry. One by one we watched cars get loaded in no obvious order (although there actually is a pretty well thought through order to these things). I figured that because we had a small car, we might get loaded first. Finally at the end, two cars remained: them and us. Them got the go-ahead and then us! Turn on the car and…nothing! Crap, we left the key in the ignition for two whole hours and that somehow drained the battery completely. “Nothing to see here folks, we’ll be right there!” I was so embarrassed as a ferry full of people watched, but at the same time didn’t really care.

David is the guy in front, unable to sit and relax. 

Ferry rides; oh how I love ferry rides! I'm being completely serious; Its like a cruise you don’t have to pay for, but you do have to pay, and the food isn’t included. The first ten minutes were wildly entertaining and then I realized “this is going to be a long five hour ride”. Both David and I found ourselves unable to sit still (shocker to no one). We sat near the bow; we sat near the stern; we went upstairs; we went downstairs; we got lunch; we played the piano; we talked to people; we went on this viewing deck and we went on that viewing deck. Inside, outside, inside, outside. We probably saw as much of the ferry as there was to see.

David playing beautiful music for the entertainment of a few. 

Whilst playing the piano, David gathered a small crowd who were very pleased to listen to him play. We sat and talked with a mom and her daughter for a while. Turns out the woman has one sister in Sheridan, one in Fort Collins and one in Alexandria (basically D.C.). That’s completely insane! Anyway, she was just lovely to talk to.

We're here! And its just as colorful as I had imagined!

The weather for the entire five hours was sunny and wonderful. We had clear views all around the ship. Apparently, weather this good is a rare thing for Ketchikan. Bummer, for it sure was pretty. 

We arrived at the dock near 6pm, which was really 5pm as I had not realized there was a time zone beyond Pacific that we had slipped into. How this knowledge passed me by in all my years is beyond me. First order of business was to find our housing. We loved it! It has a nice kitchen, a comfy bed, a guest room, nice relaxing living room,  and everything we needed complete with a deck and grill. Best of all, its within walking distance of downtown and the hospital. Next and final order of business: Dinner. We went to the top rated restaurant according to Trip Advisor and it was worth every delicious penny. 

I'm not usually one to photograph food I'm about to consume, but this was absolutely the best salmon I have had, ever. 

Touristy and fun Creek Street. 

Road Trippin' British Columbia Part III

Alice's door to Wonder Land.

Kitwanga River Salmon Enumeration Facility

We scheduled a ferry from Prince Rupert to Alaska on the 25th and had essentially three days to travel three hours. We tried to find ways to use up our time wisely. 

Right from the RV park was a road leading up to a salmon enumeration facility . I don't remember having seen wild salmon swimming before, and this was really cool because they were swimming upstream. It seemed that there must have been hundreds of salmon waiting around for the gate to open and let them through. Neat! Unfortunately, the salmon were incredibly difficult to capture on camera given the time of day we visited. Once in a while a fish would expend a bit of effort to propel itself forward in line, sometimes popping slightly out of the water. I tried fishing with my bare hands: totally unsuccessful. 

Obligatory selfie of the day.

In my mind, I have conjured up Ketchikan to be the coolest place on Earth: It is colorful, there is lots to do, it is tucked away and secluded on the ocean... I have high hopes and expectations, basically. My point in saying this is that if Ketchikan is awesome, I expected Prince Rupert to be equally or at least similarly awesome. I was wrong about Prince Rupert on so many levels. It left no good impression on my mind. The restaurant that came most highly recommended was a hole in the wall where the wait staff were all under 16 and wore work out pants and see through shirts to serve in. (Food was awesome, though). Our tour guide at the cannery showed up to work in (basically) her pajamas. I'm not saying I minded, per se, but it seemed that no one really took pride in themselves, their jobs or their town.
Prince Rupert, is an oceanside town where we would eventually catch a five hour ferry to Ketchikan. Being in Canada, we don't have access to data or minutes on our phones, so we figured that once we got to Prince Rupert we would drive up to the five or six hotels we found last time we had wifi. The first hotel was a dump. The second one had a very nice and contemporary lobby but the rooms were dated, dingy and gross. It seemed like a long shot but we remembered something about a bed and breakfast. We ended up taking the cheapest room available which was a hundred times nicer than anything else we found and much more affordable than any of the hotels. Best of all: it came with breakfast and fast wifi. We had room to spread out, relax, and enjoy our vacation. For dinner I enjoyed a yummy salmon meal at Dolly's which was repeated the second night as well.

The next day, after breakfast and talking with our roommate (who was visiting from Denver, Colorado) we decided to go out to the North Pacific Cannery on his recommendation. I had assumed it was a working cannery, but it turned out to be more of a museum. Still interesting, but not super interesting.

The cannery operated from 1888-1968.

Later in the evening we went for a 3 mile stroll through the forest. In it, we got some great views of the ocean and found Alice’s door to Wonder Land. Curious.

The same canning company put forth the same canned salmon from the same cannery for years. This is why generic is usually exactly the same as name brand. 

Road Trippin' British Columbia Part II

Beautiful British Columbia

We stayed the night at a nice RV park in Telkwa, B.C.. We were the first tent campers to stay in the new tent spots made by the river. We did laundry, and journaling while eating a Mountain House Meal of jerk chicken. I thought this would be awesome, peaceful and quiet, sheltered from the road traffic with the nice lullaby played by the river. Turns out there is a train nearby that comes every couple of hours, even in the middle of the night. Grr.

We woke early and headed North towards Stewart, B.C. which would be a four and a half hour drive. Every minute of driving was greeted with beauty all around. When we arrived in Stewart it began raining pretty hard. Stewart is an adorable town of about 500 people. Just 2 km away was Hyder, Alaska, USA, a town of 200. We were able to pass in to the USA without going through customs (what's the point, really?). Hyder was relatively uneventful although I would like to note the US Post Office: It was a small trailer that had a large car port shelter on top of it. As soon as we were in the USA we were out of it and back in Canada, even though we were continuing forward on the same road. The payoff was at the end was a spectacular view of several glaciers poking through the clouds. 

On our way back to Stewart we stopped at a General Store in search of bottled water. Instead we entered a general store full of guns, knives, post cards and old stuff. Hoooowwww do you get so many guns in a store surrounded by Canada? Mysteries...
We quickly got through customs and stopped for dinner at a food truck (surrounded by a large tent) in Stewart.  

We tucked in for the night at a RV park in Kitwanga, B.C., about 4 hours south of Stewart. The next morning we stuck around for several hours blogging, eating breakfast, skyping family and uploading pictures to our computers. 

Skyping family on our phones while eating breakfast the next morning. 

Road Trippin' British Columbia Part I

Once again we rose as the sun did and got out early to beat the crowds. Our first stop was Athabasca Falls which had the most powerful and beautiful flow of water that I can remember seeing. They had a really neat walkway system in place so that you could feel as though you were in the middle of the flow.

Athabasca Falls

Athabasca Falls

We got back in the car and trekked up to Edith Cavell, a large amazing mountain face that had a glacier near the top called Angel Glacier. We hiked up to it, about 40 minutes round trip. At the base of the glacier was a small lake. Well, it looked small in the distance, but the glacier sitting in it was (I’m guessing) more than 60 feet tall.

Edith Cavell

The glacier below Angel Glacier, on the hike near Edith Cavell. 

We spent several hours driving through “Beautiful British Columbia” with a destination of Prince George in mind. A little ways outside of Prince George we stopped to do a hike in a place called the Ancient Forest. It’s a neat area of inland rainforest with some of the largest trees I’ve ever seen. The path was mostly boardwalk and stairs and an absolute blast to walk on. 

A HUGE tree!

A lovely boardwalk for hiking on. 

We took the night off and got a hotel at the Ramada Inn. I was so surprised by how nice it was, and affordable! We had a nice dinner at a place called “Earls Kitchen” (a chain throughout B.C.) and relaxed the rest of the night. 

Pleasantly surprised by Ramada Inn. When you closed the door to the bathroom, the glass between the shower and the room would turn opaque. 

In the morning, I spent a bit of time working on requirements/orientation and what-not for work. For lunch we ate at a delicious Mediterranean restaurant. Before leaving town, we heard there was a fruit winery near by. The wine was okay, but the best part was what happened in the vineyard. They had a seating area created near a stage that went up a hill. Spontaneously, I headed up the hill, for a better look. Once David joined me, I decided, without notice, to roll down it. I have not laughed so hard or enjoyed myself so much in a long time. I felt like a child, and it was a blast! By the time we left, both of us had rolled down the hill three or four times.  

Northern Lights Winery

A great place to roll. 

Best day ever!

Road Trippin’ Banff National Park 8.18.2015 and 8.19.2015

Road Trippin’ Banff National Park 8.18.2015 and 8.19.2015    

THE Lake Louise

I know I say this about every place we go, but Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada is amazing. Its absolutely stunning with huge mountain faces, peaks and glaciers. Before we drove through Calgary, the last big city before Banff, the landscape closely reflected that of Wyoming in a sort of Bizzaro Land kind of way. Lets just say I was very happy when the landscape changed.  I am in awe at every turn; every mile the car moves forward offers a new spectacular view.

I thought this was funny. Here we were in the heart of Canada, using time and kilometers as a form of measuring distance and then there is a sign with distance shown in mileage. 

Our first stop was to a place called Bow Falls which offered a pretty impressive rapid/fall on the river. After that we walked around the town for a bit, which seemed like an odd mix between Aspen, Gaitlinburg and Estes Park, but beautiful nonetheless. We settled at a Tex-Mex restaurant and an older man sat next to us. As cool and calmly as possible I told David, “I think that guy is famous”, swearing I had seen him play a character in some movie at some time. This is the second or third time I had done this so I’m not sure David really cared much or believed me. We ended up getting into a conversation with the guy, and his wife joined him after some time. Turns out, he was not famous, at least not for movies. He is, however, from Austin, Texas which made my heart jump for joy. If you haven’t heard me profess it before: I love Texans. My belief in them being the nicest people on the planet was reaffirmed once again by the end of our meal where we spent most of it in conversation with the couple.

Eventually we made our way to the famed Lake Louise. I have seen many photos of it, and to be completely honest, they did the place so much justice that I felt like I had been there before. It was amazing and beautiful and at the same time, no big deal for me.  It was a big turquoise green lake at the bottom of a beautiful panoramic view of mountains. My reaction here is much similar to what I imagine I will feel when I finally make it out to see Maroon Bells near Aspen, Colorado. Pretty anti climactic. The only time I have been legitimately surprised and perhaps overwhelmed to the point of tears by a view that I have seen a hundred times before in pictures was at the Grand Canyon. Obviously, I have much more world to see.

We decided to do a hike up to a tea house. We had the Upper Tea House (further, steeper) and the Lower Tea House (not as high, not as far). Let me stop to digress about a point I’ve observed in Canada. I’m used to measuring a hike by its distance and its elevation. These two factors determine the difficulty of a hike I am about to embark upon. In Canada, they are (obviously) in kilometers, and time.  “How far is the tea house?” Oh, you know, about 2 hours, they might say. Distance is measured in time, and David warned me before that if they say it will take 2 hours, it will definitely take you two hours: Canadians aren’t weak hikers. Still unsure about the performance of my foot or how it might hurt tomorrow, we opted for the Lower Tea House. I was mistaken by thinking it would be an easy 4 km or 2 miles or who the hell cares how far it was: It took whatever time it took and it was all uphill and much harder than I anticipated. I’ve been saying a lot lately that these hikes we do are hard and perhaps I should clarify as to why I say that: To the average person, they may not be hard, but when you hike with David and are actually concerned with keeping up, they become hard. That guy has more energy than an 8 year old boy. He only takes breaks to capture a photo of a flower. Often times, if there is an opportunity, we run or jog up or down the mountain.  It’s not exactly my wish or want but with my own “gotta go gotta get there” attitude I don’t mind the rushing. It’s a great workout, but it is challenging. 

Outside of the teahouse. Each day, workers carry up the supplies for the day, and use water out of the glacier fed lake outside for tea. 

No electricity, heat or lights. Cool!

The teahouse was really neat. In my head I had conjured up a vision of nice tables with white cloth table coverings, soft violin music, a waiter dressed in black pants, white shirt and a tie to take my order of tea and crumpets. Why I thought this I have no idea, since the clientele are all sweaty dirty hikers who just trekked 1200 feet in elevation up the mountain to drink tea. So, instead, it was a rustic old cabin with no running water, heat or lights. It was quaint, crowded and it was adorable. I got a vanilla burbon rooibos tea and we shared an apple crisp. Delicious! On the other end of the table sat a family of five. We caught some of their names being Dave, Katie, and Ellie (as in Ellis) and when the other couple left, we engaged in conversation. They were from Portland on a three week long road trip through Yellowstone, Glacier and Banff National Parks. We enjoyed their company and went on our way. Remember them.

Best Day Ever!

Athabasca Glacier in the Columbia Icefield. 

It took me way too long to figure out that the thing I was looking at was actually a glacier covered in sediment and rocks. 

The next day we got up and headed to Columbia Icefields to take a look at Athabasca Glacier. It apparently used to be much further down the hill than where it is now. From the parking lot (where it was in 1948 or something), we had a bit of a trekk up to the base of the glacier. When David visited twenty years ago he said you could get on the glacier and walk around, which was prohibited now without a guide. 

The people we kept seeing.  

There is a portion of the path that allows you to get closer to the river and we walked around down there. The part I want to emphasize here is that most people walking around that day did not venture down to the lower river section. Out of nowhere, I see a familiar outline in the distance. (I'd like to note for legal purposed that we were there first). Why, it was Dave, and his daughter Ellie from the teahouse! Crazy. We talked, enjoyed the glacier, and left, never to see them again. 

We started driving down the Icefields Parkway and pulled over to see a mama moose and her baby drinking from a lake. They were quiet a distance away, on the other side of the lake, and it was a marvelous site to see. In Jasper we stopped for a bite to eat at a place called Papa George’s and I got a hamburger with cheese. Literally, my "hamburger" had a slice of ham on it, which sort of freaked me out. I noted that in the future I will be more careful when reading a menu. We spent the majority of our time in Jasper at library blogging.

Apparently, I was really mesmorized by this rock. 

We went to a campground that had 700 sites and they were all taken. Dang. This campground had about 5 loops to it, and we got a spot in Loop A right next to the bathroom. An hour or so after getting set up, I see a familiar figure walking away from the bathroom. Quietly, I said, “Dave!” Nothing. Said it again, louder, and he turned around. How the heck does this keep happening! Fool me once, or so it goes… Was he stalking us? Maybe he thought we were stalking him. I have no idea. They happened to be in the exact same loop in the exact same campground. The weird part is, they reserved their spot months ago. Either way, he was a very nice guy, with a lovely family and we enjoyed our conversations with his them.

             

Road Trippin' to Ketchikan: Glacier National Park

We spent the majority of the day driving. Glacier National Park is a long ways from home! I was so excited to see this park as, once again, I had never been here. I've seen pictures and it all looks so amazing and magical.
We arrived late in the day so there was not much to see, really. Grabbed one of the last remaining campsites in a busy, congested campground. Let me digress for a moment: I hate this form of camping and it usually makes one or both of us grumpy. Its not that I don't love people and crowds. They don't usually bother me much. I'm a stickler for the rules and I go to bed as early as an old person. I'm not talking about the 50, 60 and 70 year old old people I know who can stay up until 2 am without a problem. I'm talking the 80 and beyond who like to go to sleep by 8 or 9pm at the latest. That's me.
When we arrive at the campsite there is an option to buy firewood for $6 or 7 dollars. I know its ridiculous, which is why I'm not buying the wood for a fire: I will not be having a fire. When I hear people late at night scrambling for wood near their campsite and breaking it in to useable pieces, I quietly light up with anger. "You're not supposed to do that!" I scream, but its in my head so as not to start a conflict. Grr.
The smoke from the fire bugs me. Maybe I'm allergic, or maybe you're just not supposed to breathe that stuff in. The smell irritates me as well because it sticks with you for days. It seemed that on this particular night, everyone around us was having a fire. The couple across the way was playing a dice rolling game late into the dark hour. Grr.

I really don't mean to be a snob about it, but its probably best not to include me in your plans to go camping in a campground. I'm more a fan of the isolated spot you can find by either 4 wheeling or backpacking in. No fires, no people, no crying babies, no law breakers searching for wood, and no loud noisy air dryers in a bathroom going off at all hours of the night.
The next morning we wake early and tear down our camp. I'm worried about making too much noise until I remind myself how noisy and unconcerned all our neighbors were last night. Two wrongs don't make a right, though...

Lost (Found!) Lake. To swim or not to swim?

Since coming off the Colorado Trail, I have not been hiking once. My foot has been relatively pain free for a while now so we figured it was time to do a 3 mile round trip hike to an overlook of lost lake. "It's been found, why not call it 'Found Lake'" David says. We kind of rocked it on the 1.5 mile uphill portion to get to the overlook, passing a lot of people and not taking any breaks. He convinced me and I reluctantly followed him down to the lake, which was all downhill, and got steep towards the end. This made the total distance 6 miles round trip. At the bottom I toyed around with the idea of going swimming. It was beautiful, clear glacier fed water. I finally resolved that I could swim in my undergarments when other people arrived. I thought about it again and decided not to until realizing, I'll likely never see these people again! Just then, as if a sign from above, the clouds rolled in and it got cold. I had no towel with me. Dang it. As fun as it sounded, hypothermia just wasn't worth it.
The path uphill back to the overlook was hard for me. I was out of breath but determined to make it up. I had to stop on several occasions for a short break. Once we got to the overlook and the path returned to boardwalk and stairs, we jogged or ran down most of it. At the end, my foot was a little stiff but nothing too terrible has happened to it since. I think I'm OK to keep hiking short distances!!!
This is all we did in Glacier. There were fires everywhere surrounding Idaho, Montana, Washington and Oregon. It was a smokey mess, so I'm impressed I was able to get even a few good pictures. 

Add caption

Border crossing was fun. It all seemed to be going well until they asked the firearm/mace/alcohol question. No, no and no. They wanted us to pull over and come inside. They pulled our records or whatever they do and determined they wanted to search our car. On second thought, and apparently a little too late, I remembered that I may or may not have put the mace back in my car upon returning home from D.C.. They went through EVERYTHING and took all my carefully packed bags out of the car. They couldn't figure out how to put things back and after finding the mace kind of said, "Usually we put things back but since we found this, and, yeah, you have so much stuff, we figured you could do it". It was so weird to watch them handle our stuff. Part of me was mortified, the other part laughing (I have no idea why, though). There were two other guys, apparently brothers, in the room with us who might experience the same fate as us. They were not happy, they were not laughing, and they were completely serious and pissed. We asked them where in Canada they were headed and they literally pointed to a sign out the window that said, "Welcome to Alberta, Canada!". Was it too late to tell them you changed your mind, I wondered? All this, to just simply go across the border. I felt sorry for them.

Canadian Customs

We headed out for Banff National Park and arrived in the evening to another campground. This time, we were able to get a spot in their "smoke free" section. Much, much better.

Road Trippin' to Ketchikan Day One

The great "Out West"

We took our time leaving town and finally got on the interstate at noon. I'm pretty sure the day started with a big ugly fight, but I digress. Most days of or days before traveling are so full of stress that tensions are running just a little bit high. David and I are very aware of this and despite that, a fight usually breaks out when we find we can't just sit back and laugh at the situation.
That I can remember, I've never been to Laramie or Jackson Wyoming so we charted a course to Yellowstone through those two cities. Laramie was insignificant to me, and Jackson was cool enough. The Tetons National Park was a first as well, and I marveled at the mountains laying before me. On our way to the unofficial campground, we saw a large herd of Bison grazing before us. It was stunning, especially next to mountains and the sunsetting sky

Jackson, Wyoming

We tried finding a campsite in what would have been the coolest place ever but we ran in to several problems. For one, it was close to 8pm and there was no vacancy. Determined, we drove beyond on terrible dirt roads to find the best, most isolated spot ever. This is a bad idea with my car- a Subaru Impreza with the worlds record for lowest clearance. My car was even lower than usual because it was packed full of heavy food, clothes, water, scuba and camping gear. There were a few face wrenching unavoidable scrapes along the bottom side of my car. It was a very unpleasant process. Near 9 or 9:30 we gave up on any hopes of going in to Teton National Park or getting a campsite. We looked in to getting a hotel in Jackson and the few available units were outside our price range. So we did what we do best- keep going until you find the perfect place. Two hours away, in Idaho Falls, ID, we landed on a soft pillowy bed.

The Tetons