Creative Spanko Wench Blog

I must say that though I opened my report of this stop with a spanko vignette (completely fiction as I am sure you know) I must say it was an awe inspiring place. We docked to the threat of drizzle, and while I waited for my tour it did drizzle, but actually that lasted all of 30 minutes and there was no more rain until the ship was pulling away from its moors.

Did you know that Ketchican is the rain capital of NA? and that 3 days without rain is considered a drought? Did you you know that many residents collect rain into cisterns as their primary source of fresh water, so three days without rain can be disaster since seagulls poop on dry roofs and that’s where the rain collects??? Now, I knew about cisterns for irrigation and I knew about swamp tanks for air-conditioning, but I never thought of roof water collection for fresh water. As of the day I visited Ketchican they were approaching 130 inches of rain for the year (and here I am from south TX where 12 inches in two months was flood worthy and exceeded our year’s max.)

It was certainly a beautiful place. I never expected to see so much color in gardens and window boxes, never mind road side gullies.

An established eagles’ nest was one of the 1st things pointed out to us and it had both a nestling and a branchling that were both visible (nestling = eaglette too immature to chance falling or flying …. branchling = and eaglette almost ready to fly and physiologically ready to risk falling. Both parents were not far off.

Not far beyond them was an inlet with leaping salmon, then a raft of kelp and log debris large enough to support both harbor seals and otters.

I was transfixed, and missed several photo opportunities.

1st bears were really far away…. mom & cubs & then daddy… or presumed daddy Y’all met ablurry image of him yesterday.

We walked bay a small puddle and were quickly shown why staying on the trail and knowing the landscape was essential. The 4 foot diameter puddle was bottomless based on testing by a few 9 plus foot poles - ‘muskeg’ was what the guide called it, and I didn’t argue. Muskeg has a few other definitions up in the north, but bottomless pitts of unstable surface is good enough. Even if the peat mummies of Whales, Ireland & Northern Great Brittain weren’t accidentally trapped in their graves, no doubt there are thousands of pre-historic and post historic Alaskans and visitors as perfectly preserved in the black tannin of such surprising puddles. Wish I could have saved that picture in a way hat would have conveyed the awe.

As a wood carver I was particularly fascinated by the trees. Here’s a much too decayed example of a burle (which is essentially a benign tree lump) Gosh would I have loved to have a piece of this 50 years ago…

There’s a raptor habitat in the rainforest. The goal is that all these injured birds will be released into the wild. Cosiderin g that there are 2 times more birds of prey than humans in the Tungass rainforest and 4 times more black bears in an even wider scope of the north, and considering the zeal of the folks I met and their pride in this I couldn’t help smile with faith that if possible this bald eagle and his bud the owl will be free this year & if not they’re well cared for in as wild an world as possible….

OK so I didn’t get the owl sized right and I’m pooped and ready for bed….

Owl tomorrow along with the Ice fields near Juneau. I’ll need some dramamine…. LOLOLOLOL

(copyright 2008, patty —- NB this is intended to be a bit of fiction augmented just a bit of travel log…. the rainforest was gorgeous and the guide was superb… grin grin grin)

Patty was on the tired side when she climbed the shuttle to the rain forest walking tour. She’d gotten bumped from her tour to one later than she booked. (7:50AM alaska time - still way too early since she’d gotten up for a 6:50AM tour) We’re not talking about a morning gal here… 6:50 AM equates to a 3AM tour based on her clock. Being barely awake and as a result of bargaining which need mattered more, food or sleep, patty’s wait for the later shuttle wasn’t just frittered with frustration, but stomach growls as well.

As luck would have it, luscious and wondrous scenes weren’t all she had to anticipate once patty met her guide. # 1 he was peeved that he was stuck with a walking tour when usually he did the zip line canopy tour. Fun yes, but why would anyone spend $300 bucks to zip across a rare isolated rainforest on a wire in 5 minutes when for $90 bucks they could walk it and actually see it?.

Well it seems that the guide was particularly opinionated about impact on the land and as it seemed, even more afraid of black bears. Considering that blueberry colored bear scat was one of the first sights the walking tour was introduced to, and then sckunk weed trampled trails were next, patty deduced correctly that it was fear of bears that her guide was really motivated by.

Shortly into the hike, patty spotted a bear. She would have missed it, but it was running in long grass along a creek. As it turns out, like almost all creeks in that part of Alaska it was a Salmon spawning creek. The bear nabbed its salmon, munched on it for quite a while (patty has lots of hunched over pics of his feast).

Trouble is she’d had to buy a new camera before making this trip. The guide kept saying, “turn off the flash! turn off the flash!” Thing is, patty had no clue how to do that and had fixed on the chapter of her user guide that advised flash even in full light usually gave the best photos. Not knowing how to turn off her flash was one thing, not wanting to so she could get better pictures was another….

This pic was taken from ore than a mile away, but the flash surely did make the black bear roar & threaten…

No one on the tour (all three of us was particularly worried, but our guide was.

The tour continued, patty continued to use her camera the only was she knew how (flash included). Many many sights were to be seen, and may I leave those for another post? Just so you can see just how gorgeous with flash up close full light pics can be here’s the one…

The guide was @ 6′2″ so imagine since those are his arms next to the tree roots just how huge that root feature is????

Patty saw the side ways looks from the guide, but it wasn’t until after they’d reached the end of the tour when he asked to show her a rarely seen part of the saw mill (a rusty feature adjacent to the gift shop). Did his obvious aggravation with here really sink in? Obviously not. She’d paid for the tour, earned it in fact.

Well it took her guide all of 4 minutes to show her all of the ‘non flash - perfect picture’ features of her new camera. Trouble was that he’d guided her to the old shakes & shingles store house, and dark though they were with age, patty found out that a 60 year old yellow cedar shake packed a mighty whack.

The driver of the shuttle back to the ship was none to happy that patty had trouble sitting in spite of his warnings. Before he could haul her aside to take her in hand on the landing dock, patty gave him a tearful gaze and rubbed her shake battered bottom. The driver grinned. He knew.

Twas an Alaska tour with all the features… …

:) More of the real rainforest to come… (& boy could my bottom use a good paddleing….) hehehehe.