Here's Some Stuff I Bet You Didn't Know about Ketchikan

As you may have been able to tell from my previous blog posts, Ketchikan is a pretty quirky place. I'd like to share some of the quirkier bits about Ketchikan- some things that I love and some that I find to be pretty strange.

1. Our staircases are streets

The "street" leading up to and past our apartment

      Because of the way the houses are stacked up on top of each other on the mountainside, the city built a series of staircases connecting all of the houses to each other and to the road. These staircases are technically streets. They each have their own street sign, get snow service in the winter and get mail delivery as well.

2. All of our restaurants specialize in two cuisines or more

The sign doesn't say but they also have a large selection of Greek food

We suspect that most restaurants in Ketchikan have the philosophy that if they can't excel at cooking one cuisine, they can just adequately cook several cuisines, giving the customer more options and thus distracting him from the mediocrity of the food he's eating. Chico's, pictured above, is just one example, specializing in Mexican, Italian and Greek food. We have yet to eat at a place that is just one of anything. Even the Filipino restaurant that actually cooks delicious Filipino food also serves sub sandwiches, pizza, soups and salads.

3. Whales, not Goldfish

This is how it's done in the West and beyond

I had never heard of Whales before I came out to Alaska, but they're a pretty big deal here- often preferred over goldfish, which I thought was blasphemy until I tried one. THEY. ARE. SO. CHEESY. Their cheesiness goes beyond that of a goldfish cracker. I can't even explain what tasting one is like. It's like cramming an entire wheel of cheese into a tiny whale shaped cracker, basically. I can't get more eloquent than that because just thinking about them is distracting me and making me hungry. What I'm trying to say is, if you've never tried a Whale cracker you've never really lived.

4. You can smoke cigarettes in bars

What is this, the 80's? Almost every bar here gives you full license to smoke butts in bars. It's pretty gross, in my opinion, but I legitimately believe the bars here would be out of business if you weren't allowed to smoke in them.

Oh, Jack, seeing your beautiful face as I walk home from work every day truly makes me happy

 The Asylum, pictured above, is one of the many puff-friendly bars here and just so happens to be about 100 feet away from our apartment.

5. We sell furry undies to tourists

It's unfortunate you can't see the back, which sports a tail

   We sell some pretty weird souvenirs in Ketchikan, among which are furry underwear. If they weren't made out of real fur and were actually within a price range of a gag gift I would probably by them because they are hilarious. But, alas, they are actually a real gift and cost real money, and I would love to meet the person that actually drops a couple hundred bucks for them one day. I know it's just a pipe dream, but I too would like to be rich enough to buy my friends real fur underwear as a souvenir from Alaska. One day.

Miss everyone down south, but I'll be coming home in a little over a month!

See you soon,

Bridget

Jumping Ship

     When we first decided to move to Ketchikan, I really wanted to get a job related to biology, but since we were pretty late in the application game the spots I applied for in this area had already been filled, so I looked elsewhere for jobs and ended up at the Lumberjack Show. At this time of the year a lot of people are heading to college, however, and a friend mentioned to me that one of the naturalists at Allen Marine just left and they needed a new one pronto. I was a little hesitant at first- I had never quit a job before and sometimes it's just easier to stay at a place even if you're in a rut. My gut told me that it was the right move for me, though, and I headed up to the office, applied for the job, was interviewed on the spot and got an offer right then and there (they must have been desperate!). Anyway, the past week I've been training on my boat, the Kalinin, as well as on the other boats to see what their tours are like. Needless to say, it's been awesome. My tour is called "The Best of Ketchikan Land and Sea" and involves an hour-and-a-half boat tour along the coast of Revillagigedo Island, where I inform passengers about the ecology and natural history of the area. We take them to the historic George Inlet Cannery, where we go through an hour tour of the salmon canning process. We then say goodbye to our passengers as they board a bus which takes them on the last leg of their tour (the "land part"). We then pick up another group of passengers that have just gotten off the bus part of the tour and go through our two parts of the tour in reverse. It's pretty great because I get to talk about nature while being on a boat all day, and I get to shmooze with people. I love shmoozing. So here are a few photos from my first week at my new job:

My boat, the Kalinin - a 65 foot monohull vessel

One of my training days, incognito

The old George Inlet Cannery

New Eddystone Rock in the Behm Canal

The Misty Fjords National Monument (the destination of one of the other Allen Marine tours which I got to go on for my training)

A gorgeous day on the boat

A harbor seal basking in the sun while his friends play in the water

    Overall, I'm really happy with my decision to switch- I'm having a great time and am learning so much about the area and about boats- I'm also racking up sea days which I can use if I ever decide to become a captain. Definitely a possibility. We have had some gorgeous weather for the last couple of days and I actually got a little suntan today (woohoo!). I think I'll go join Matt, Kevin and Casey on the dock- they brought a bottle of wine and a guitar with them so I think we have our whole night pretty much mapped out. Hope everyone down south is doing well, keep sending up that sunshine!


Bridget :)

Mama Bear comes to Alaska

      This past week has been one of the most fun and memorable ones that we've had so far in Ketchikan, because my mom finally arrived for her visit with us after a week long rafting trip along the Selway River in Idaho and Montana. She arrived late on Friday night and we settled in to her rental apartment with some wine and some good story sharing.
       After getting out of work early on Saturday, Mom wanted to take me out to lunch, which initiated our sad tour of Ketchikan's measly selection of restaurants and eateries. Matt and I usually never have to worry about this because we don't go to restaurants. After an adequate lunch at Annabelle's (named after a beloved prostitute, as are most things in this city) we hit up the Blueberry Festival. This festival was a wonderful gathering of community members to share artwork, food and music with each other. Interestingly enough, though, was our discovery that there are in fact no blueberries at the Blueberry Festival. If you inquired about the location of said blueberries to the locals, they quickly turned defensive. The two best responses we got when we asked were:
 1. "It's not about the blueberries, it's really about the culture"
2.   "Well there's actually a grocery store right down the street and I think they have them there..."

        A few days later we found out that the reason there aren't blueberries at the festival is because all the blueberries on the island, while delicious, are infested with little worms. Mmmm, tasty! Another delightful aspect of the festival was the Battle of the Bands. Well...sort of delightful, seeing as the only band we heard was a heavy metal band and it didn't really sound like real music. After giggling behind our hands about the band we noticed that two of the band members worked at the Duck Tours and one of them worked at the Lumberjack Show. It was pretty weird.

The weirdest part was that I think these guys won

      The Blueberry Festival culminated in a beer tasting at the Lumberjack Show site which was super fun, but we kind of couldn't believe they'd let that many drunk people around a pool with a bunch of logs in it, surrounded by chainsaws.

Mom and Matt drinking $30 worth of beer in itty bitty cups

       When we bought our tickets for the beer tasting we were automatically entered into a raffle, and amazingly enough I won the grand prize! This would have been a little more exciting if the grand prize was something useful or even something I could carry home. Instead, I won:

A Twisted Tea Bean Bag Tossing Game!

    The game board weighed about 40 pounds and folded into a suitcase which didn't make it any easier to carry. I ended up giving it to the lumberjacks, who have already made a lot more use of it at their frat house then I ever would have at my apartment. It was cool that I won something but I would have been perfectly happy with the "inferior prizes" such as the Alaska sweatshirt or baseball cap. I guess I can just add this to the random things I have won in my life, such as the Diaper Derby when I was a toddler, and a ride on a scooter pulled by a team of sled dogs in college.

    Although I had to work on Sunday, Matt had off so he spent the day with Cathy- they went to the Eagle Hatchery and hit up a few of the totem pole hot spots in the city.

One of the two teaching eagles at the Eagle Sanctuary

The Clan House at Totem Bight

             By far the best part of Mom's visit was our excursion on Monday. We got free tickets onto Kevin's Wilderness Survival Skills boat tour (let's just say we know a guy) AND there happened to be a videographer on board so we'll be in a promotional video for the tour! Our skilled guides took us on a beautiful boat ride to Blank Island, telling us about the natural history and ecology of Ketchikan and the surrounding islands along the way.

Pretending to have a deep conversation to get in on some promotional film time

Naturalist Casey shows passengers some Dungeness Crabs pulled from a crab pot

 The boat dropped us off on the island with the Wilderness Skills Instructor, Jeff. As we watched the boat recede into the distance, Jeff informed us that we were now officially in a survival situation and that he would teach us how to utilize the resources on the island in order to stay alive and comfortable. We learned how to make shelter, identify "edible" items and start a fire with a magnesium striker. It was awesome.

Exploring Blank Island

Jeff informs passengers that you can actually eat that thing!

Our first foray into home ownership!

Starting a fire from scratch!

       We had so much fun on our excursions but we had an equally great time kicking back in the apartment eating great food and over-analyzing the Olympics. It was so great to see my mom and get to spend some quality time with her. And it was also awesome that she fed us food and bought us nice things. She headed back to New Jersey yesterday and Matt and I are settling back into our routine. As for me, there are some interesting things in the works and I will dish more later in the week as things develop.

Stay tuned for more!

Bridget

Paintball + snow-covered mountain = many bruises

     On Saturday afternoon, Matt and I received an impromptu call from Kev asking if we'd want to go on a hike- a friend of Kev's from work has a truck and was willing to take a bunch of people. While the details were vague, apparently the crew was bringing along some paintball guns and gear for the hike. Matt and I thought that sounded pretty cool, but we had no idea what we were in for. Kev's friend Martin and his fiancé Jesse loaded us up in their pick-up truck (there were 7 of us but, hooray, we're in Alaska so we can all jump in the truck bed!) and drove us out to Dude Mountain, a beautiful little peak on the north end of the island. Going out there highlighted what we were missing by not having our own car to see parts of the island, but Matt, Kevin and I seem to be racking up friends with vehicles so hopefully we'll use this to advantage for the rest of the summer.
      The ride to the mountain alone was incredible- we had to gain a couple thousand feet in elevation just to reach the trail head. Once we got there we decided to hike up and then away from the trail to find a good spot to shoot at each other without disturbing other hikers. As we embarked, our new friends assured us that they had a pistol with them in case we saw any bears. Oh, goody.

We're going up there?

All suited up!

First attempts at shooting the guns were challenging.

           For, Kevin, Matt, Casey, and I the adventure was thrilling because none of us have been paintballing before. Unfortunately for us, our other three friends are paintball fanatics and thus the first round was a little painful. The coolest part was definitely the fact that the top of mountain was covered in snow, meaning that we got to slide on our butts and hide in snow-covered trees as we shot at each other. Nothing feels more badass than shooting a paintball gun while sliding on snow.

Hiking and packing heat

Kevin, in the middle of kicking butt and taking names

       One unfortunate aspect of our inexperience in paintballing is that Matt wore shorts- he didn't realize that the paintball guns would be the primary focus of our hike- in other words he didn't plan on getting repeatedly shot in the shins and now has some beautiful welts to show off. We had such a fun time that our bruises and cuts were well worth it, and we're hoping we can go do this again soon because it is a great way to appreciate the outdoors while beating the crap out of each other with paint-filled bullets at the same time.
       
       In other news, we've been working hard and anticipating the arrival of Mama Drake, which will occur on Friday- hooray! There will be a plethora of detail on that coming soon.

Hope all is well with everyone in the lower 48!

Love, Bridget

P.S. I couldn't help but include this last picture.

Three amigos peeing in the woods

Hi there, I see you've noticed my Mustang.

      It's about 9:00 AM my time and I just got in from my favorite thing to do on my day off- sitting outside on my steps people-watching with a cup of hot coffee. It's really fun because the tourists point and wave at you as if you're a feature in the Ketchikan landscape. Sometimes people walk up the stairs and ask me questions, too, which always makes me feel very useful and important. I am really enjoying interacting with tourists much more than I thought I would because they are people in vacation mode, meaning that most of them are feeling very pleasant and relaxed. It's also pretty cool to meet people from all over- mostly from the States but also a lot from Europe as well. Crew members from the ships also come in to the show a lot and it's really interesting hearing about their lives- they have very regimented schedules but get to see all sorts of cool places so most of them seem to like their jobs.
      I haven't written in a while because I haven't had a day off in a while and that makes a huge difference in my willingness and ability to write creatively. However, I DO have a day off today, and Friday as a matter of fact! Hoorah! The only downside is that Matt and I haven't had a day off together in a few weeks which makes me very sad. I will most likely request one soon so that we can go do something fun together- we each feel too guilty to go on any excursions or do something new without the other when we have our separate days off. This isn't to say that we haven't been having fun this week- we've had some very pleasant days. This week, we finally got our library cards- yay- so we can start checking out DVDs instead of streaming crap-quality ones from the internet. Also, Matt had a very exciting day when the owner of his company put him in charge of transporting one of his classic cars, a 19something Mustang Coupe, for the day - Matt got to drive it around and keep it overnight, hence the photo shoot that follows.

Cruisin' in the Mustang

It only took us about five minutes to discover that the gas tank is on the back of this car!

     The owner rents out these cars to people on cruise ships who want to look really cool as they explore their port- you can rent this baby for a very nominal fee of $150 per hour (!). For people with a lot of money to blow, it's actually a good idea to rent a car because the best parts of Ketchikan are out of reach from walking or taking the public bus. When we had the car, it was a very rainy night so we didn't take the car anywhere special except the gas station. I'm hoping that the opportunity will come up again for this so we can cruise around on a nice day and make everyone jealous.

    Last night, Matt and I used the excuse of our one-and-a-half-year anniversary (which, yes, I know, is not in fact a real anniversary) to go out to dinner. We tried this place called Oceanview which specializes in Italian, Mexican and Greek food. It is very common here to specialize in at least three things, and you're not considered a real restaurant if you only serve one nationality's cuisine. It was a gorgeous night and the food was delicious.

Us at the aptly-named Oceanview Restaurant

Cool floatplane docked right outside

      Other than that not much else is going on right now but we have a lot of exciting things on the horizon. We are so excited to be having my mom up to visit in just nine days and will be doing a lot of fun stuff with her while she's up, which includes experiencing Ketchikan's annual Blueberry Festival which is supposed to be pretty fun. We have come to the sad realization that we are already past the halfway point of our time in Ketchikan, so we are reluctantly drawing up our bucket list and considering our next adventure. Suggestions for this next adventure will be gratefully accepted via e-mail or facebook :)

  Thanks for reading!!

-Bridget

The Meanest Fish in the Ocean

After weeks of overcast skies and a buttload of rain, we had forgotten what a real summer could be like. Then, last week, we awoke to a beautiful cloudless blue sky and it seems to have stuck- this week we have had AMAZING weather. Luckily for both of us, Matt and I have had a few more days off recently so we have had the chance to capitalize on it- and by capitalize I mean spending every day out on the breakwater or the docks fishing and drinking beer. We've done a lot of fishing on the breakwater, which is the jetty that protects the harbor.

Matt casting out at the breakwater

View of the city from our fishing spot. The green roof next to the pink building is the Lumberjack Show!

A very happy pup going out to sea

          We've met a few hilarious locals down at the breakwater, particularly Billy and AJ. Billy claims to be a boat salesman but we're pretty sure he's homeless. AJ is a proud Tlingit Native. He slurred a few words at us and when we stared at him blankly, he said "Oh sorry, I forgot you guys couldn't understand me, because I was speaking Tlingit- fluently." Pictures of these characters will hopefully be coming soon. We also met a super nice guy our age who makes a a hundred thousand dollars each year working on a fishing seiner in the Bering Sea in the winter- not exactly a glamorous gig, but he gets to do whatever he wants in the summer. I've already looked into applying but they're not looking for chicks for some reason.

           Kevin and one of his crewmates, Casey also discovered a new fishing spot on a low dock beneath the cruise ship berths. We went there one night when the weather was fabulous and watched the sunset while fishing. We didn't catch anything for keeps but observed and pulled up a lot of weird looking critters.

A jelly!

A sea cucumber! Check out the tubercles on that one!

A sunflower sea star, as identified by our resident naturalist Casey

         Our most exciting fishing excursion to date was Herring Cove. Over the past few months we've heard a lot about this mythical Herring Cove- the salmon jump like crazy and you can watch the bears fish. The only problem- it's about ten miles south of town and none of us had a car. Luckily for us, on a day we all had off, Captain Steve offered us a ride. His words: "Sure, I'll give you a ride there, but don't call me for the ride back." So off we were dropped, and sure enough it was awesome!

Fishing at Herring Cove

         When it came to finding a ride home, we were a little skeptical that hitch-hiking would get us far when there was four of us loaded up with fishing gear sticking our thumbs out on the side of the road, but within five minutes we had a ride from a nice older woman who was visiting from Anchorage.

To fit in her car, Casey had to wear the net over his head

        I bet a question you're all wondering is: how many fish have you caught, if you've been doing all that fishing? Unfortunately, none. We almost caught one - the one that flopped away, as Matt and I wistfully call it. It was one of the first few days we had gone fishing and Matt excitedly reeled in this huge silver salmon that looked like it had been through a few battles. Unfortunately, we had not gotten a net at this point so we had a bit of a challenge trying to pull it up on the rocks. Matt thought that it was wedged pretty securely among the rocks and was figuring out a method to kill it when it snapped the line and flopped into the water with his hook and six dollar lure in its belly. Definitely the baddest, meanest fish in the ocean- and judging from his scars we weren't the first ones to catch and lose him. Matt was a little frustrated that his first big catch didn't quite land.

      Although we haven't caught anything yet, we've been having a fabulous time- probably our best week in Ketchikan so far. We're going to keep enjoying our beautiful days and gorgeous nights- more soon :)


Love,

Bridget and Matt

July 4th in the 49th State

         As Matt and I found out this week, Fourth of July in Alaska is a heartwarming event to witness- they take their American pride pretty seriously. On the 3rd, we were the lucky "plus one" guests of Kevin and one of his crewmates Casey for the Allen Marine holiday party, which meant:

1. Delicious free food! 
2. Free drinks! 
3. Singalong guitar music and an annoying company staff member who kept interrupting the guitar music to force everyone to participate in Ketchikan trivia!

         These are all important ingredients in any company party so obviously it was great. We had a lot of fun on the actual fourth this year because the Lumberjack Show put on the Ironjack Competition, the annual timber athlete state championship. It is free admission for members of the community, AND they served beer so obviously every seat in the stadium was full. Matt and Kevin had a great time watching it and I had a great time basking in the honor and glory of timing the events. You're officially important when you get to know who won each event before anyone else does- I got to find out even before the athletes did!

Two of the lumberjacks competing in the single-buck saw event

       Another fun part of the 4th was getting to see my cousins, the Lotts! They just so happened to be coming into town on a cruise and it was very fun getting to catch up with them over some good eats.

Chris, Allison and me at Annabelle's

          Ketchikan hasn't had fireworks in three years on our national holiday because of the torrential downpour of rain they always get on the fourth. Luckily for us, it was a dry day and night and we witnessed some great 'works from the city as well as a firework-off between a few of the boats on the water.

Kevin wouldn't let me tag him in this on facebook so I had to sneak it into my blog instead

         Other than a fun fourth, Matt and I have been working hard and have been wavering over some pretty big purchases- we almost went to the movies last night and I caved and bought chocolate today after a tiring day at work. We're saving up for tours and trips so we can have some serious fun on our days off and at the end of the work season, where we're planning on taking a week or two to visit some other parts of Alaska. In the mean time, we're taking it easy while reading and brushing up on our culinary skills. Much love to our friends in the lower 48!

More soon,

Bridget