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Today shall be all sightseeing, I think. You never know for sure when you have these many shoppers in the group!
A quick breakfast and we decided we should drive to the end of the road out south so everyone can say they rode down every inch of our highway...all thirty six miles of it! We made it out to Beaver Falls but nobody is up for a two to three mile uphill hike. Go figure! Last time Nina and Jerry came up, we got them to hike up with us. On the way we ate fresh berries right off the vine and cool water out of the stream. This is actually the shortest hike from this trail head. When we were arranging the activities to be had on this trip, the first thing out of Jerry's mouth was NO HIKING! A quick look around at the power plant located out here and we headed back with a stop at the Whitman Creek waterfall. This waterfall is always flowing but if you come out after a good rain, the roar is amazing and the water flowing through is awesome! It hasn't rained much lately but the waterfall still looks great. We all had to go to the perch for some pictures. I even shot a short video of it for effect. The video is a part of the slideshow. We then did a bit of berry hunting and eating at the waterfall and we were off again.
Back to Herring Cove for more bear viewing. We got stiffed this time because the bears were in the woods laughing at us standing around. The people in the walkway across from us were funny because they had binoculars and were looking for eagles on our side. I kept waving to them to look up and nobody would. About fifteen feet over their heads was a bald eagle just chilling out. Finally someone saw it and the flash photos began. So, since we got stiffed on the bear viewing, we walked across the highway to Alaskan Brand. The last name of the people that own the jelly and jam booth is Brand, hence Alaskan Brand. Everyone bought some Jelly, Jam, and honey for later or home.
Since we saw no bears on this run, we stopped off at Southeast Exposure Canopy Tours. I couldn't sell anyone on going for a canopy zip line ride way up through the trees! We wandered about admiring their wares and Raul bought Amelia a cute little copper ring at the blacksmith shop. I used to work with the blacksmith's brother in IT at City Hall. We then went over the carving shed where we ran into Toni Huson. Her husband, Wayne, is a native carver. We know them from way back in the day about twenty five years ago. This was back when Wayne was just learning to carve and now he gets paid big bucks to carve totem poles. He has carved all eleven poles they display here. Toni does a bit of carving herself and does all the painting for Wayne. They were currently working on a killer whale which will sit at the very top of the totem pole they are working on. We checked out the totem poles in front of the store and Toni told us where to find the others but its a little too far to walk so into the car we go.
We drove a short way to the entrance to the actual tours and found the rest of the totem poles. Wayne has done some beautiful work. We took pictures of all the ones we could. My favorite was the one depicting a killer whale eating an octopus.
Off to the Discovery Center for a self-guided tour. The entrance fee is cheap but we tried for discounts anyway. Hey, we are senior citizens after all! Funny, to us, thing happened here. We were all at the booth and I was about to pay when the weird looking attendant looked right at Jerry and in what I perceived was a condescending tone, asked him "are you with them?" Before I could say anything, someone pointed at Tammy and said "we have another one here" and we all laughed. Everybody, except the attendant who probably felt like an idiot. We took our time and viewed all the exhibits. They have done a great job in here so you have to go slow or you'll miss stuff. We toured and then watched a cool film in their theater about Ketchikan. There was a wall where they projected these images that were pretty funny. Tammy said one looked just like me and unfortunately, I couldn't argue it! The exhibits are awesome and highly detailed like the carved canoe, the smoke house and the bent wood boxes. I love the taste of smoked salmon which several people I know make using Alder that grows here like weeds.
We are walking around checking out the display when we look out one of the windows and what do we see? Rain Barrel gift shop. We saw that and had to laugh because we were at Tongass Dock store the day before looking at souvenirs when an obviously intoxicated man came over and started talking to us. He claimed to own the Rain Barrel store and told us we should go to his store because his stuff is real and he doesn't sell cheap China junk. He went on and on about this working himself into a frenzy and told us to see him before we bought anything expensive. For God's sake, these are souvenirs, not art! Anyway, we had a good laugh the rest of the day at his expense saying we had to go over to the Rain Barrel to get real Alaska junk. Well, here we are and we are going over to the Rain Barrel store as soon as we leave the Discovery Center.
We get to the store to find a guy I think is the one who approached us but cleaner looking. After Raul befriends him we talk for a while and who shows up? His brother comes in but sober this time so he has no idea who all the people smiling at him are! They did actually have some pretty nice stuff in here and some we had to buy!
Off to the docks again, we've got plenty of them. This time a cruise ship was getting ready to leave so we hung around as the last person hopped on and watched them shove off. By now we were pretty tired so home to dinner and rest. Tammy bought a game called Pirate Farkell which we all learned to play so we all played that for a while. Its actually a fun game!.
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