Kayaking in Ketchikan, Alaska
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
The sun shines brilliantly today here on Revilla Island, and the water calmly moves through the Tongass Narrows in southeast Alaska. One cruise ship has already landed and two more scheduled for this morning. This town of eight thousand will grow by five thousand by mid-day. Visitors from all over the world join us for a day and all will be gone after dinner this evening.
I am up earlier than usual taking my wife to the ferry this morning, so she can catch the plane to Anchorage. A five-minute ferry ride will take her to the airport on Gravina Island. Water surrounds us and often falls on us from the rain forest covering above us. Thirteen feet of rain per year heralds the rain barometer on the downtown docks.
Not today. Blue skies welcome tourists and locals alike. My friend Gregg Thomas, an Aussie turned local, drives his van towing ten kayaks behind him to the dock and his business. These kayaks will offer the adventurous a chance to touch some Alaskan nature. Many people kayaking will see the real Alaska. Eagles, sea cucumbers, seals, island formations, the first schoolhouse in Snow Cove, the wreck of an old barge. The very fortunate will view a killer whale or two humpbacks or ten for the very fortunate.
Kayaks offer a clean, silent journey for people to touch a slice of the Alaskan waters and there is no better experience
than challenging oneself with the channel. A definite ecological experience. For the local it offers a chance to remove oneself from the island for a while and see the surrounding world. If its challenge you look for then not far off on a two-hour kayak ride is the more turbulent waters of the Gulf of Alaska.
I am up earlier than usual taking my wife to the ferry this morning, so she can catch the plane to Anchorage. A five-minute ferry ride will take her to the airport on Gravina Island. Water surrounds us and often falls on us from the rain forest covering above us. Thirteen feet of rain per year heralds the rain barometer on the downtown docks.
Not today. Blue skies welcome tourists and locals alike. My friend Gregg Thomas, an Aussie turned local, drives his van towing ten kayaks behind him to the dock and his business. These kayaks will offer the adventurous a chance to touch some Alaskan nature. Many people kayaking will see the real Alaska. Eagles, sea cucumbers, seals, island formations, the first schoolhouse in Snow Cove, the wreck of an old barge. The very fortunate will view a killer whale or two humpbacks or ten for the very fortunate.
Kayaks offer a clean, silent journey for people to touch a slice of the Alaskan waters and there is no better experience
than challenging oneself with the channel. A definite ecological experience. For the local it offers a chance to remove oneself from the island for a while and see the surrounding world. If its challenge you look for then not far off on a two-hour kayak ride is the more turbulent waters of the Gulf of Alaska.
