Alaska 2013, Day 59, Sitka Day 3

Tuesday July 30, 2013

Raptor Center

Very few people at the Raptor Center today.  We got our own personalized tour.  They have grown since 2008, more birds, more cages.  Previously they only had eagles.  Now they have ravens, owls and hawks. We walked the Indian Creek trail out back.  There were pinks in the creek that made for some good pictures.

 

 

Ferry to Wrangell

The ferry to Wrangell was schedule for 5 PM so we stayed in the Sealing Harbor Campground until almost 4 PM since they didn't collect for the day until supper time.  We got down to the dock and found the ship schedule had changed for tides in the Peril Straits.  The ship was bumped to 6 PM.  Lesson: always check  ferry times at the terminal a day before against what the tickets say. We went back through the Peril Straits on the Matanuska (bigger and slower than the Fairweather). This is a 15 hour leg so we  got a cabin with a shower.  We did showers and laundry, $1.50 a load! We got into Petersburg at 5 AM.  They needed me out of the way to load 3 semi trailers so they had me pull the camper up into  the parking lot then reload with the Petersburg passengers. They put a 40' semi trailer on, had to back it down the ramp.  A deck hand told me the 25' trailers have frozen seafood (salmon, halibut, dungeness crab).  He said a couple weeks ago they had seafood  trailer refer quit on them and they lost the whole load.  They had fish thawing on the deck and had to place trash cans along the  edges of the trailer to catch the run off.  We got out of Petersburg 30 minutes late. About 30 minutes or so out of Petersburg you hit  the narrows.  We got everyone up to watch the narrows around 7 AM. I took some video of "One Tree Island/Green Rock Lodge" and all the channel markers.  We passed a barge and tug in the narrows, the tug let the barge drift almost to shore so we could pass. We had  breakfast in the dining room and hit Wrangell at around 9 AM.