Prince of Wales

As I write this, I am sitting on the deck of the cabin where we are staying on Prince of Wales Island. We are in the burg of Whale Pass (Pop 58). The most wonderful thing about sitting here is that all I can hear are birds, a babbling brook and my fingers on the keys as I type this. There is no car noise, not boat noise, nothing,

We met up with Marilyn’s cousins Anna Lou and Mac in Ketchikan. Very quickly the four of us became a pod. Mac is a professional photographer. He has a Nikon D200 with him, and he is an amazingly patient teacher. He and I bonded instantly, and I am sure we have bored Marilyn and Anna Lou to death with camera talk. He has convinced me to buy the D300s I have been contemplating.

Upon arrival on POW, we were met by Marilyn’s cousin Pat. He has been in Alaska for many years, and lives alone here in Whale Pass. He talked a blue streak through dinner. The restaurant we ate at was on the water in Craig, we enjoyed Pat’s stories and watched the waning hours of light on the lake and mountains surrounding us. Then we drove to Whale Pass, which is about 80 miles from the restaurant with the last 25 or so miles on a dirt road.

There are black tailed deer here on the island, they are quite small compared with our white tailed deer. We must have passed hundreds of them but they were not particularly phased by our driving past them. We had to be very careful though because they would suddenly jump out and run up the road in front of us.

Pat got busy talking with Mac, and we missed our turn by about 12 miles. We had to turn around and come back to the Whale Pass cut off. But at 1:45 am we arrived at our destination, and after unloading our provisions and belongings, we fell into bed and slept deeply.