6/29 Enough is enough. Time to head to dryer weather.

After checking in with mom in Kake we decided it was high time to get away from some of the rain and headed slowly southeast. We made Petersburg on the 27th. Petersburg it a lovely little fishing town. Very Norwegian still and has the largest fish packing plant in all of SE. Not very touristy but big on sports fishing with lots of outfitters and lodges nearby and. The town itself is small and insulated. Like so many other areas of SE the rhythm of the place is is slower than what we are used to. The economy is so dependent on the fishing and other natural resources of the area that there is a great dependency. On the fishermen and on the weather. All the other businesses are dependent then those two things.

We pulled into town after 10 hours of cold and rain. Our first afternoon and evening were wet walks around town. Many of the businesses were closed. There were few places to eat and the busiest business seemed to be the laundry mat that was filled with rubber booted fish boat wives hauling in hefty sacks of laundry. By the time we went to sleep that night our cabin was full of drying boots, and two full sets of slowly drying rain gear.

The second day in town broke warmer and with some sun. Yea! And though we were the only pleasure boat in North Harbor by the time we went to sleep our second night we had had a lovely conversation with a couple on a power boat and sailboat with captain and two crew. Then we ran into Steven on Kharma who we knew from Seattle Fisheries Supply. He like us is now officially retired and a full time cruiser. He was there to drop off crew and then off farther north.

This morning we are off southward still looking for some more sun and a bit of warmth. We found a t-shirt on Petersburg that summed this weather up......being a rain forest and all....."southeast...the closest you can get to living underwater." Back through the Wrangell Narrows and on to the town of Wrangell. We only spent one afternoon and evening so didn't get to see much of the town really. We did ride our bikes out to Petroglyph Beach Park. The petroglyphs were a bit of a disappointment. There was a big hill between town and the glyphs are hard to find. There are supposedly 40 on the beach strewn about but I was only able to find 3. Turns out quite a few have been removed to the Wrangell library and various museums. There were some good reproductions on the parks boardwalk but it looks like the wave action on the beach has obliterated most of them.

On the way home we stopped for a bit to eat and I met a man who was traveling with his wife from Alberta. . Several times I heard him loudly exclaiming to the staff that he was from Alberta, "the pumpkin capital of the world." I was curious so went over to ask him about it figuring he must be a pumpkin farmer or maybe grew prized pumpkins or something. Turns out the only claim to fame was that his town has a big weigh in every year to find the biggest pumpkin. His wife rolled her eyes as we were talking, I think she is used to his .....loudness.......then as I was leaving to go back to my table he told me a joke. His lead in to the joke was his exclamation that Alberta is in fact much colder than SE. So to explain that he said..."three Albertian men were sitting around talking about how cold it was. The first man said "last night it was so cold, as I walked home from the bar I needed to take a leak and I had to step back 40 feet. The second man said that's nothing, day before yesterday I was out squirrel hunting. I shot one out of the top of a big tree and by the time he hit the ground he shattered in a million pieces. The third fellow said "that's nothing, last night I awoke in the middle of the nigh tand I could feel something hard by my feet. I ran my foot over it and it felt sort of round but not round, sort of football shaped but not football shaped. I reached down and grabbed it from below my covers and pulled it out. Sort of furry but not quite, sort of brown but not quite and sort of green but not quite. Then suddenly it just turned into nothing in my hands........that's when I smelled it. it was a frozen fart!

So much for Canadian humor eh? Love kat