Familiarity

Just to get my bearings straight, I'm sleeping in the Walmart parking lot here in Ketchikan. It's not flashy, nor is it the best spot on the island by any means. It is, however, a nice, comfortable reminder of a life I've lived before, sleeping at Walmarts in Canon City, off 6th Avenue, Colfax, in Stapleton, in Westminster, even in Aurora... life can't be all bad when you're, in an odd sense, home.

BattleWagon III

This is the beast that will cater to my needs here in Ketchikan. Larger than I've ever been able to live in, this machine has a queen-sized bed built in. My next mission: to explore strange, new places; to seek out new people and new cultural differences; to boldly go where I, alone, have never gone before. (I apologize, but I've always wanted to tailor that to this blog somehow!)

A Day of Exploring

I don't know how many miles I walked this morning, but I was out of the house relatively early this morning and went on a walk-about around Ketchikan. I thought it was going to rain all day, but after a cloudy start, the day turned into a partly-cloudy, bright day. I walked what must have been 7 or 8 miles, and my feet even hurt a little bit, but it was well worth it.

I walked south-east along the ocean for a while. They've built an incredible system of boardwalks along the docks here, so that the cruise ship people can access the town easily and walk everywhere. Lots of the parts of town built by the ocean stands on pilings, huge structural foundational supports that are driven deep into the floor of the bay. It seems to me like a massive feat of engineering, but I guess it's been done for hundreds if not thousands of years. Still, it's really neat to be able to walk across these walkways suspended about 30 feet above the water. A lot of the houses and shops are built on the steep hills and have stilts and steep wooden stairs to get to them. Most of them have connected wood decks, like boardwalks, and they're actually marked as "streets". It would be great to live in a house off one of these streets, but where would you park? How would you get the groceries up?

Before I headed into downtown proper, I stopped and snagged a picture of the Aleutian Ballad, one of the ships featured on the Discovery Channel's show "The Deadliest Catch". In my head, I heard Mike Rowe and some narration about that ship leaving Dutch Harbor... and then I heard Bon Jovi... and it's been stuck there ever since.

I started exploring downtown after that. I walked through the area with the narrow streets and the businesses. The town itself is very small, very cute, very tourist-oriented. Everything revolves around the cruise industry, which starts on Thursday of this coming week. That's when the first cruise ship gets into town, almost doubling the population as soon as it docks. I'm curious to see how that will be to see a huge ship docked here in this little town.

One of the neatest things here in Ketchikan is Creek Street. This is one of the boardwalk "streets" I was talking about earlier. It's suspended above the creek, and it's packed with restaurants and shops. It used to be the red light district, full of brothels, saloons, and hotels. during the prohibition era, I guess the crooks with the booze would come up at high tide and sneak under the shady places and send up their hootch through a trap door in the floor of their back rooms. I love it! The honest need for booze and the means by which people went to procure it... so fascinating to me.

After Creek Street, I walked up to the city park, where there was lush greenery all around. There was a big fountain, and the creek was partially diverted to make these little streams and pools throughout the park. All of the benches and picnic tables were soaked, but still... it was pretty damn neat.

My final photographic link to my story involves a sit-down at the local Safeway, experimenting with my panoramic tool on my camera. The resolution isn't that great, as I don't have awesome software on this computer, but the general point should be construed. Here's the ocean from Ketchikan:
Now that it's up here, it's much too small. I'll have to build another one soon. In the meantime, enjoy!

Ketchikan

When I got off the airplane at Ketchikan Internationl Airport in Monday night, I walked out of the terminal to this sunset, on a rare and "sunny" evening. It was pretty amazing, but the locals told me that it was rare, and I was lucky to not have been greeted by wind and driving rain. Oh, well. I'll take what I can get. So far I've been here three days (including Monday), and only yesterday was rainy.

I snapped this picture yesterday morning. This is the road that runs by where I work now. I work up the hill to the left at that intersection. The forest all around here is thick, a rainforest so to speak, with moss and ferns and all sorts of dark and dripping things. The amount of the color green is so incredible. I remember thinking that in Georgia, but this is much, much thicker

.

This ship is one of the big cargo ferries that travels the Alaska Marine Highway System. This view is looking out from by where I work, across the Tongass Narrows with Gravina Island in the background, where the airport is. I took a ferry from the airport to town. That's the way it's done up here. It would have changed had the "Bridge to Nowhere" been built, but that got shot down as "Pork And Barrel" spending in congress.

At any rate, so far, it's great. More pictures and stuff to come.

Morning in Alaska

I took this picture this morning looking southeast at the greater Ketchikan. It was a gorgeous sunrise, even if there wasn't really any sun. The days are a little longer here, but I haven't adapted from Colorado time either, so to me, bedtime is around 8 or 9, and I'm wide awake before 5. I'm sure I'll adapt.

As soon as I get some internet figured out, I'll post a longer entry with more and better pictures, but for now, I'll try to stay on the mobile witchcraft here.

Sea-Tac's Main Terminal

This place was huge! The windows curved as if nature was pushing inwards on this large space! This is the main terminal at Seattle-Tacoma International Aiport. Not quite as big or unique as Denver's Jeppeson Terminal, but the windows were enough to get my attention and share them.

Inside a Lonely Corner of Sea-Tac

Airports are airports. I've always loved them for being the hubs of people's best and worst emotions. Today, however, everyone just looks tired, and I'm bored. I wish I had enough foresight and money to find a friend to explore Seattle with. No matter, I will sit here and enjoy my quiet time. Four and a half hours to Ketchikan.