Wrangell

Happy Anniversary to us!!! We made it three years as of September 6^th!! We celebrated the way you would expect us to - with beer and pizza at one of the local bars!!

Sure enough the Wrangell Narrows were just that – very narrow. We were wondering why the trip was scheduled to take three hours. We quickly found out that the ferry wasn’t able to travel very fast due to the narrow channel and abundance of other marine traffic.

Upon arriving in Wrangell we were not surprised to find it nestled on the shore of huge mountains, as this is the trend in southeast Alaska. At 2,100 residents, Wrangell is a tad bit bigger then Petersburg but doesn’t seem to have the same flair that would encourage you to make it your home.

The two main attractions in Wrangell are its abundance of totem poles and the ancient petroglyphs on the shoreline. Since it wasn’t raining too hard when we arrived we decided to start with the petroglyphs. Over 40 different ones have been etched in the rocks. The local Natives’ oral traditions do not mention them and scientists are still clueless as to who carved them and for what purpose, although there are numerous theories; welcoming the salmon back to their spawning grounds, doodling, ceremonial grounds, etc. (Dave thinks the doodling theory is the best.) Here are just a few of them we saw.

There were totem poles located throughout the town. We will talk more about totem poles in the Ketchikan post. For now, here are a couple of photos.

We spent our time in Wrangell at a FREE US Forest Service campground overlooking Zimovia Straight. The campground itself is rather unique. Along a stretch of road there are as few different campsites. Each “campground” is composed of only one to three sites, each with its own outhouse, fire pits, picnic tables and firewood boxes. When the clouds would part we had spectacular scenery. When the clouds socked us in we had great views of fog. We were able to see the Straight because the sites were in old clear cuts. Because all the trees were gone it was easier to create these views that would have been hidden by trees. Here are a couple of photos when the clouds parted.

(Linda: This is what Dave was looking at when he was talking to you.)

From Wrangell we went south towards Ketchikan (our last Alaskan stop before we hit Canada).