Eagles, airplanes, boats, and meeting Janet - Day 7, June 22

An eagle flew by the window this morning before I was even dressed. So I grabbed the camera and went out on the deck. This beautiful bird was perched high in a tree up the mountain.

He seems to just sit there and pose. I got several very nice shots of him. Great way to start the day.

I decided to go down by the water to watch for eagles and enjoy the traffic on the water. If you look really hard you can see what appears to be a log in the water just below the white house with a dark roof way in the distance. There are eagles sitting on it.

Zoomed in ...

...and zoomed in even more.



Turning away from the water, this is the view. If I zoom in...

...I find this eagle. I could hear him and had to look a bit to find him, but he was worth the search. He was "talking" to another eagle because I would see and hear him and then hear another seem to respond, but I couldn't find the other eagle.



Just to the right of the eagle and not zoomed in as much, here is the view. This is Deer Mountain cloaked in clouds in the background. I think most of the houses in Ketchikan can see the water as every row is just a bit higher up and can see over other homes. I don't know if the pictures I have shared give the true sense of how quickly the roads go up and the way this town is built. I hope so, because I think it is awesome. ... though walking up the hills is not so great...LOL

There is always a lot happening on the water...

Planes landing.  These are coming and going all the time. Three landed, one right after another. Many more landed in the time I was watching from this spot.

Now I am walking towards downtown. I get many views of the water between buildings. Many of the businesses built right on the water have decks out over the water, or docks so there are places to get a good view even with buildings all along the way.

This is a RAVEN...there are no crows in Alaska. There are lots of ravens, however. Raven is in many of the legends of the natives. He is known as The Trickster, he has a part in their creation legends. He is found on many of the totem poles.

Many of the buildings are built right out over the water. This is between two buildings.

The boats almost look like they are racing.

The view as I walk along the sidewalk towards downtown. The left side has houses, while there are businesses all along the right (water) side. It is a walk of about a mile and a half to get to the tunnel from our place. The tunnel signifies the start of "downtown." Even before the tunnel, though, there will be businesses on both sides of the street.

How would you like to carry groceries up THOSE steps? Actually, they do not have to. The next street up is behind the house, I think, so this is just for convenience to get to the street. I haven't actually been up behind these houses, but may do that someday when I get a surge of energy.

Not yet to the tunnel, though it is barely visible at the end of the street. Traffic going towards downtown goes around the tunnel to the right. Traffic is one way through the tunnel, coming towards us.

One more view of how the houses almost looked stacked on top of one another.



One of the cruise ships. This one is at berth 4. There can be as many as 4 ships in at one time.  Some days 5 will come in, but one has to leave before another is scheduled to dock. Notice the name "Radiance of the Seas."  I have noticed that many of the ships' names refer to their beauty or greatness on the seas. MANY others have Princess in their names.

This is looking over the edge into the water along a dock. Notice all the sea life clinging to the dock. Richard, isn't it awesome what this camera can capture? I spend a lot of time along the docks peering into the water and wondering what is lurking below the surface. I watch out onto the water as well.  I heard that a pod of killer whales was spotted right here in Ketchikan a week or two before we got here. So one never knows what one might see....so I keep watching. I don't think I could ever tire of watching the water.



Another treasure found!

There are a large variety of vessels in Ketchikan harbor. Here is a small sample ...

     

Here is a picture I thought you children might like...



Isn't he a beautiful dog?



Downtown Ketchikan - I just love this view with the snow-capped mountains in the background.

I decided to eat at this little place along the docks.

No, that is not my lunch! It was, however, displayed to tempt patrons and I did see many people eating these and the huge shrimp they also offered.  I had a simple meal of a piece of cod and fries for $4.75.

Not sure why I even took this picture as it is not a good view of the place I ate. However, it turned out to be a special picture to me. The lady had just sat down. I asked her where she was from. Answer: "Oregon." We started to talk as we ate and kept right on chatting. Then we went on a walk down Creek Street together. Her name is Janet.

We went into The Opal Shop where we met the owner, Andy. Andy does it all. He is part of all the steps it takes to get this beautiful jewelry into his shop. He does the mining in Australia - we saw pictures of him in the mines. He designs and makes the jewelry. Then spends his summers in this shop on Creek Street. Janet purchased a beautiful opal necklace.

Dolly's House is now a museum on Creek Street. Creek Street was once the red light district and Dolly was a long-time "resident." This is one of the "girls" inviting us to see the museum. ($5) We have not gone inside yet, but probably will one of these fine days.

Janet and I said, "Good-bye" as she had to get back on her cruise ship. I caught a green line bus for home.

We discovered this little church just UP the hill from us after we learned that the green line bus goes up the hill and stops a half block past our street, so we can walk down rather than up Carlanna Lake Rd. We plan to visit on Sunday.

Daniel - you mentioned how you loved those red flowers. Well, here they are in purple. They seem to come in lots of different colors.















Ketchikan - Day 3 - Saturday, June 18, 2011

Our exploring today began about 11:00 after a nice breakfast of omelet and sausage, which I cooked and Juel did the clean-up. 

The mist/cloud is very low first thing this morning over my mountain view. I love that I have this interesting view to sit and watch as I wake up and type.

These float planes are frequently flying over or landing/taking off on the Narrows. We see planes "parked" at houses over on the island. There are more pilots in Alaska than any other state.

I noticed this bird through one livingroom window and quickly grabbed my camera. It is, I believe an eagle. And, as I sit here typing, I just saw another one fly by. This one was much closer and definitely an eagle.

 Ruth was coming to get us at 11:30 but we got impatient and left early, figuring she had to come up the Tongas Highway and would see us, which she did. 

But before Ruth picked us up we had passed the hospital where Juel will work. She starts on Monday, June 20, 2011.

We found a parking place downtown. Town is so quiet today as there are no cruise ship in and none are scheduled to arrive.  When that happens most of the town shuts down. For us, this was a nice quiet time to explore downtown and that is what we did. First we went down to the water.  The water is always an exciting place to be and we got a super surprise.

We saw jellyfish! There were several of these beautifully colored ones. They were right near that ramp in the picture above this one.  We walked down to that ramp and took these interesting pictures of the sea critters.

We also saw these clear jellyfish. It was such a special "bonus" to our day to be able to watch these beautiful creatures.

There were also LOTS of tiny clear jellyfish here at the edge of the ramp. Juel is attempting to catch one. We are going to buy a little net for times like this. Something small that I can keep in my backpack.

Juel was successful after several attempts to catch one. It feels almost like nothing but a mucus blob. After a close look, she placed it back into the water.

These are so beautiful and I took LOTS of pictures of them.  It was hard to choose my favorites to share here.

These two pictures (above and below) were cropped and enlarged. (Richard, this information is especially for you.) These jellyfish did such contortions when they turned to go.  It looked almost like they turned themselves inside out.  I took a long series of pictures as one did this. I am definitely going to go back and see if they are always in this area.

 

You can see the smaller ones in these pictures and get an idea of the size of the larger ones.

These clear ones are especially beautiful. God sure created some interesting creatures for us to discover and enjoy.

There is always so much interesting activity on the Tongas Narrows.

Here is a barge loaded with those large containers being towed.

This is a tour boat being towed out by a tugboat.

I had read about The Alaska Wild Stunt Show on the internet before we left. It sounded fun, but not enough for the $29 per 20 minute show.  However, they had a special thing going on today since there were no cruise ships in. They did free shows today, taking donations (cash or canned goods) for the Women and Children's Center. So we decided to go and support this cause and get the fun of the show.  Below are some pictures of the set and a couple of the scenes from the skit.

The skit was funny, but I would have been very disappointed to have spent $29 to watch it, but was fine to make a donation to such a good cause.
 

Not sure what Big Foot was up to as he didn't stop to talk to us.  Never know WHAT you are going to see here, I guess.

We had lunch at a nearby pavilion as they were raising money for the same cause. I had a grilled turkey burger. They had nice help-yourself bar of ketchup, mustard, relish, sliced onions and tomatoes, and lettuce. So I was able to make a wonderful sandwich.

Boardwalk along part of the harbor.

From the boardwalk we could see this crab in the water. Another fun surprise of one of God's creatures. I did crop and enlarge this picture.

This shows a typical road off the main street. All roads go UP! 

We got sunshine! We had blue sky!  It didn't last too long, but it sure brings out the colors. This is part of Ketchikan Harbor.

Me with Creek Street and Deer Mountain in the background.

This is a view of Creek Street from the other end than I shared yesterday.

Fox Lodge is part way up the mountain, so they offer a free tram. They welcome everyone to come and see the lodge, the view, and their totem poles. It is like riding in an elevator. You just get in and push the up button and off you go, seeing a marvelous view of Ketchikan as you go.

A look down from nearer the top.

Fox Lodge's totem poles.  These are Simshim poles - recognized because of the use of only red and black. They also often use buttons in the decoration.

Thought my grandchildren would especially like this one. Many of them have the tongue hanging out. We are sure to learn more about totem poles as the Ketchikan area is famous for having the largest collection of them.

We decided to walk down from Fox Lodge. These wooden steps are just the first part of the journey down.

Part way down we were walking along the road and ran into Jim and Heidi. Jim is an avid birdwatcher and was photographing these baby flickers. We would never have seen them if we had not run into Jim and Heidi.  Thank you, God, for leading us to this special encounter and the chance to witness the momma bird coming to feed her brood.

We continued our walk back down along a pretty creek. Parts of it were over rapids.

We have been told that this creek will soon be filled with salmon. The salmon run starts towards mid-July. I am so thankful for this extended stay here and how much it is going to allow us to see and do.

This, I believe, is the fish ladder I read about. It aids the salmon in the journey up this steam, by helping them over some of the rougher spots. I don't know exactly how it all works, but I guess I will see for myself later as it gets put to use.

Still on our journey down from Fox Lodge we saw this old building a "local" happened to hear us remarking about it.  He told us it was the old hospital.  Juel is sure glad they have a new one.

Back down by the Narrows now, we see that it is raining in the mountains across on the other island.

This picture was taken at the same time as the previous one of the rain in the mountains. I simply turned and faced the other direction.
You can see how quickly the weather changes here.  We carry our rain jackets with us all the time and have put them to use often.

Ketchikan keeps a record of the precipitation. What we call rain, they refer to as "liquid sunshine."

This sign welcomes visitors as they get off the cruise ships. This is their first view of Ketchikan.

The Ketchikan tunnel is through a rock. I read that it is the only tunnel that you can go through, around and over.  Traffic going north goes through the tunnel while traffic coming south goes around it to the left.  It appears there is a road up on top, though I have not yet been up there.

 

Ruth had dropped us off down town as she needed to get home because she worked this evening.  So Juel and I planned to catch a bus home.  This was not as easy as it looked.  It seemed like we were seeing buses all the time and we had a bus schedule.  However, we couldn't figure out how to read the schedule, so we started walking. We were told we needed to catch a green line bus.  When we finally saw one it stopped at a bus stop about half a block from us and didn't wait. So we walked some more. It is a little over two miles from downtown to our home. We were less than half mile, I think when we just couldn't walk anymore so we found a bus stop and sat down. We had been walking most of the day (since 11:00 and it was now nearing 8:00)....wow! That is much of 9 hours of being on our feet.  No wonder my feet are getting anxious to get these shoes off.  Finally a bus came and we got on.  Now we did know that the green line bus comes right up Carlanna Street (which is one of those UPHILL streets off Tongas).  All we could think of is that we would have to walk up that street.  But the bus driver did tell us that if we rode the bus as far as WalMart, he turns back to go downtown.  On this part of the route he does go UP Carlanna.  So we decided that that was what we would do.  However, after a few minutes the bus pulled into the hospital and we decided since we had caught our breath we would walk from there.  We cut through the hospital. The bus stops at the front and we went out the back through the emergency entrance.  From there we can cut over to Carlanna, but we are half way up.  We did make it home, but two very tired ladies.  

Oh, I forgot to tell about where we ate dinner.  It was a little place down town called Burger Queen.  It looked like a rather dumpy place but a lady we asked about places to eat said that the locals eat there often.  So we went.  The food was good, but not cheap, and the place was clean...so it was a decent meal, but we will not likely eat there again.