Day 13
Ketchikan
Today we arrived in Ketchikan Alaska with a 7 hour layover (I’m not sure what they call it on a boat but this will do). With that the Columbia Ferry Motorcycle Club took the bikes off the ferry and rode the highway here. All 22 miles of it! We started off by heading north and visited the Bight Totem park. This park had a number of totems with different meanings. There’s quite a story behind each totem which I don’t have the knowledge to get into. Each of the animals on the pole mean something different and somehow indicate the status of the house that owns the pole. Quite interesting indeed. Also Di, our team eagle eye spotted several bald eagles and got a few pictures of them. I was either not paying attention or was too slow to get a picture of any of them. (DOH!)

After visiting the totem poles we proceeded north to the ‘END’ of the road. Since we had found the end, it was time to go find the other end and we turned ourselves around and headed south. Shortly after passing through downtown Phil spotted a pod of Orca out in the water. We all hurried to park and we hustled down this driveway to get pictures. I took a bunch and you can see the best one I have here (again, I SHOULD have bought a telephoto lens). Then turning around we noticed several bald eagles perched behind us. Now it was, do we watch the orcas or the eagles? I got a few pictures of the eagles which you can see in my flickr album. Resuming our trip south to the other ‘END’ of the road we looked for the Forest Canopy tours. Basically its a nature hike/ride through the forest canopy on zip lines. We missed it and backtracked. Unfortunately upon finding the tour we discovered 1) we didn’t have enough time and 2) it was a $150. So, we asked about a good place to eat and hopped on the bikes back into town.

We had lunch at Anna Belle’s. It turned out to be a pretty good lunch. Most of us had some form of Halibut (Fish and chips here) and enjoyed it muchly. Phil (Adventure Rider Guy) bought is lunch which was pretty cool. After wrapping up for lunch we all split off to do things on our own for the last hour and a half. I dropped by a bar called The Raven which had good bear and the Internet. I updated my pictures and blog for the day and then moved on to catch the ferry again. Not much happened after the ferry. I read some more of my book and got some rest. With mention of the book, there’s a quote in there that has stuck out in my head.

All of my friends have seen me change in the last 4 years. And, I have to admit I’ve not been too happy with the change. My divorce with Danae affected more than I would have admitted to most. Which is why this paragraph from this book stands out to me. Granted, I didn’t loose as much as the author did, but this stood out. This trip was pretty significant to me as it gave me time to focus on something I enjoy, and to find something new to build on moving forward.

Everything that we were, everything that we based our lives upon, everything that we believed is gone. In my journal one time, I expressed the feeling of hurt that I carried around, so similar to the feeling of being betrayed, and I concluded that I had been betrayed, by Life itself, and that’s pretty deep. So, the betrayed ones, like you and me, have to start all over again, from Absolute Zero, and construct some new version of “Life,” one that we can “live with.” no way can we hold onto what we used to believe, and no way can we forget what has actually happened in our lives, and in our worlds. We will never trust Life again.

(Neil Peart, Ghost Rider, p. 257)

This trip was pretty significant to me as it gave me time to focus on something I enjoy, and to find something new to build on moving forward. Look for a future post explaining why I took this trip, if you care to understand. But to wrap it up, here’s a beautiful sunset from the boat.

Ciao!