23 May (posted 1 June 2022)
We fished a bunch more, to no avail, thank god for spam. It pretty much rained all day. Virgil caught a little steelhead and threw it back. If you remember me joking back in Austin, MN at the Spam museum that we were going to live off the land, and spam was a last resort. Well it tastes like bacon in the morning.
Today was an all Virgil Day. He found ANOTHER four leaf clover, he saw a fat porcupine sitting in the tree and came and got all of us to see. He retrieved my stuck fishing spoon by using another pole and hooking the stuck hook right in the hole and pulled it out. Its good to have friends like this.
24 May
The rain is on again off again, a big improvement over yesterday, with afternoon temps 52 and evening 42. Not too bad. Did some more fishing, nothing. Saw lots of sea urchins and star fish when the tide goes go out, pretty kool. Went for walks, on one of them saw nice black tail deer up the road looking at us. Going to move in the morning to Long Lake, get back to fresh water and catch some trout. The plan is to spend the night there.
25 May
Traveled a whole 8 miles on a single lane gravel road to Long Lake. We got here and there was nobody there! There is only one picnic table and one parking space. Bigfoot and Elkhorn fit perfectly. There was moose poop everywhere, but we never did see Bullwinkle.
We hiked 0.6 miles down to long lake along a well constructed, pathway and many, many step, built out of 20 inch wide planks. The muskeg is very soggy, and if you set of the planks up will sink. I lead our group of explorer fisher people and Virgil took up the rear, we wanted to protect
our women from bears. As we descended down the path we cross several streams with a nice plank bridge to cross, until. we got to one stream and bridge had wash out.
So no worries, we all just crossed the stream, one at a time, hopping on slick rocks till we got to the bank. What could go wrong with a group of sixty-something walking on wet slippery rocks.
Continuing down the path and we got to out next obstacle. A spruce tree tree had fallen across the boardwalk. Well no problem, we are all old enough to remember dancing the “limbo” with a lamp shade on our head, right? We did our version of it, one at a time maneuvering under and through the tree branches without falling of the boardwalk.
We continued down and got to a stream that had an an elevated rock basin type of water fall to our left that mother nature made. I though that is the dream waterfall of all yard landscapers. IT WAS BEAUTIFUL (and the bridge was intact).
27 May-Today was replenishment dayf or all of resources and it also enforced the concept of the “Six Degrees of Separation”. As we were driving through town, I notice a lady frantically waving at us. I recognized her car as LaDonna’s, our friend from the ferry system. We stopped, and we all hugged each other like family, and we got caught up and then said our good byes. How cool is that?
Bigfoot and Elkhorn spent about 3 hours in the laundromats’ parking while the we did two weeks of clothes. I was told that from now on we would be on one week intervals. Roger that!
While at the laundromat, we met the owner, Carol. A very nice 50 year old (about, I didn’t ask) hard working lady.
Carol apparently is a good entrepreneur doing well for herself. She has owned multiple businesses and buildings in this small town, in fact she built the laundromat which has six 1 bedroom apt upstairs. She talked a bit about the children’s garnets, and we said we had not seen any. Well, she called her three grandchildren, 16, 15, and 9 years old and within a few minute they arrived carrying a milk crate full of rocks and an plastic organizer, that had the garnets separated by size and price.
The oldest kids were encouraging and training the 9 year old to describe what we saw, how they mined it, and what the prices were. They use a hammer and various chisels to breakup the rock to find the multi faceted gem imbedded in the rock. They pop out the gem from the rock. Wow, what a lesson we had from a kid in a laundromat,
Virgil and Delores bought a hand full of gems as did we and we all gave the youngster a nice tip with many encouraging words. So $85 and 3 hours later laundry was done, and we each have $50 worth of gems.
During our conversations with Carol, we found out our Alaska Ferry Crew member friend, LaDonna actually work for Carol as a waitress in her restaurant! When we spoke to her about meeting Jimmy the US Forest Ranger and what a great help he was, she said, she knew Jimmy has a young boy and watched him grow up. Before we left we ask her
to recommended a restaurant, she said go to the Stikine Inn, and that she was absolutely spot on.
We drive over to get propane, and Keith, who works there, said, Hey, you were parked by the Helipad, yep that was us. We talked for while. Small town…
Obtw, we saw Jimmy in town, Virgil asked him what happened to the “young adults’ and the stolen kayaks? Jimmy said he spoke with the kids and they said said, it was just a big misunderstanding…!
Wrangel is a terrific small community of hardworking, friendly and kind people. Much different than Ketchikan, Wrangel is every bit of Mayberry RFD. We wish we had more than 8 days here, but our journey here is over and the next one begins to Petersburg.
