Petersburg

This has been my favorite stop on the trip since McCarthy and Kennicott. This little town of 1,200 people has got a lot going for it. Located on the northern tip of Mitkof Island, the Tlingit (Kling-kit) people have called this place home for centuries. In the late 1800’s a Norwegian immigrant selected the town site for a cannery and saw mill. Many Norwegian immigrants followed him and soon the town was born. Many of the present day local people can still trace their ancestral lines to some of the first immigrants to settle in Petersburg. Norwegian flags were everywhere, as was other hints of their ancestral heritage, like this huge Viking ship in the center of town.

Fishing is the main industry on the island. The men can be gone for up to six months at a time out on the fishing boats. One of the local girls working in the visitor center told us marriages don’t last too long in Petersburg. Cheating is very common due to long times spent apart. However that didn’t seem to damper the spirits of most of the people we saw. There were women everywhere – much different then other parts of Alaska.

Crab Traps

Petersburg, like much of southeast Alaska, is temperate rainforest. Not only did we see huge trees but there was moss covering almost everything. The tree branches were covered all the way to the needles.

Moss Covered Tree Branches

See Jody Really is a Tree Hugger

Even the beaches were covered in life. The tides are very dramatic in this part of the world and when low tide comes around a whole new world is uncovered. We walked around at low tide just to check out all the new critters.

When the clouds lifted enough to see across Frederick Sound on the eastern part of the island, the LeConte Glacier peaked out. There were even icebergs floating in the Sound.

The US Forest Service maintains trails all over the island. Most of them are accessed from old logging roads and were made of planked boardwalk that got pretty slippery in some areas. To mitigate this, they had stapled some fish netting to the boards for added traction. We checked out three trails that each went to a different lake. All three had a rowboat and a small dock for the public to use. When the sun came out we took advantage of being out on the water. The dogs also got a kick out of it and Otis even went swimming!! I don’t think it was on purpose. He thought he could walk on the aquatic vegetation and when he tried he went completely under. You should have seen him swim when he popped back up. He could have beaten an Olympic swimmer he was so scared.

Sprout Checking Out the Water from the Boat

All of Us in the Rowboat

The island had a fair amount of wildlife. We saw Black Tailed Deer everywhere. Dave seems to think they must have come to an agreement with the cars – they would graze on the side of the road and get out of the way of the cars as long as the cars didn’t try to hit them. It seemed to be working because we saw lots of deer all along the roadsides, but none of them were dead. Ironically, we didn’t see that many male deer. (See there really were women everywhere on this island!!)

Black Bear

On the way back to the campsite one night we came across a mother porcupine bringing her baby across the road. The baby was so cute we couldn’t resist putting a couple of photos of it on the blog. I mean how many of you have ever seen a BABY porcupine? This was certainly our first.

From Petersburg we were off to Wrangell via the Alaska Marine Highway. Unlike I said before, it is this stretch that contains the Wrangell Narrows (a very narrow stretch of water between two big mountains).