Sitka - Hiking & Whale Watching

Well, here we are on our last night in Sitka, Alaska. We head out tomorrow, September 23rd, on a long ferry down to Petersburg, Alaska.

It's been a fun 4 days here even though it's rained every day, we did get to see the sunshine at least for a few hours each afternoon. This town is situated on the Baranof Island and all around us are other smaller islands. Only way here is via plane or ferry so it's quite secluded.

Yesterday we hiked up to Thimbleberry Lake and Heart Lake on a wooded trail and then got some Subway sandwiches for dinner. The sun was shining and it felt good to hike. We even picked and ate wild blueberries along our journey - yummy!

Today, we got up early and went out on a whale-watching tour with Alaska Wildlife Tours and got some great pictures of humpback whales. We were surrounded by whales, but kept our distance as they were feeding on krill not far from our boat. They popped up and we got some awesome tail shots, but no breaching or fin-showing for us. It's hard to get the entire picture of them from above the water, but they are between 40-48 feet long and can weigh up to 40 tons!!! WOW! Here is more information on these awesome creatures: http://www.acsonline.org/factpack/humpback.htm.

We'll be sleeping again on the ferry (cuddle up and sleep on recliner chairs or on the floor in sleeping bags as we're too cheap to rent a cabin) and will wake up on Wednesday in Petersburg. There we will stay for 3 nights then get on another ferry down to Prince Rupert, B.C. Canada. We were going to head down to Oregon, but have decided to instead drive down through Montana and over to Wisconsin to pick up our trailer so we can drive back prior to the snow falling.

Future Plans Have Changed: Due to our house not selling (ugh!) we will not be going East on this trip, but will definitely plan something in the next year or two to spend a bunch of time over there. I know we have friends awaiting us and we haven't forgotten about you, however the trip will have to wait for another time. We're a bit bummed by the house not selling...nothing we can do about that so we're moving back in by the end of October and will find jobs to pay the bills in early November. More to come....