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.