Chapter Eleven - Simply Incredible

What started out as a rather mundane drive, turned into hours of incredible beauty as the road followed the Skeena River for miles and miles through the mountains. The Skeena River is a large river, sometimes at least half a mile wide, or wider, and flowing quite fast with many swift currents. Once again around every curve their seemed to be another highlight as mountains, river and road all seemed to blend together. Oh yes - did I mention that we have still not seen an elk, caribou or a moose on the trip. I’m beginning to think that all those pictures of moose that I have seen in the past, are

really taken at some local zoo.

We pulled into Prince Rupert on the Pacific Coast, just below southeast Alaska, where we did some laundry and then had a wonderful dinner of fish and chips and some kind of salad. Bet you can’t possibly guess who ordered the salad, and who had the fish and chips. Halibut, by the way, and was it ever good, and fresh.

About 8:30 PM we decided to head down to the Alaska Marine Highway terminal where we would have to get in line for the 5:45 AM ferry to Ketchikan, our first step into the 49th state of the union. Thought we just might be first in line, but oh no, a number of others had beaten us to the punch. At that point we basically had to sit and wait. About 1:00 AM I was awaken from my sleep by engines starting up all around me, and realized that the cars and trucks were moving,

and I wasn’t. That changed - and I pulled up further in line into the “waiting pen” where we are still waiting to move on thru customs. I’m guessing that might happen around 4:00 AM this morning.

All in all a spectacular day, even though we probably will end up with only a couple of hours sleep this evening.