Dispatches from Camp Ketchikan: I Got A Job!

There is just so much shopping, apartment cleaning and laundry doing that I can do in a given week. I knew that I would have to do something if I was going to save my sanity for the entire summer. Dan was worried that I would become bored. Actually I thought he was worried that I would shop all his pay checks away at the jewelry shops! So, to stave off my boredom, I decided to actually look for a job. I asked Wendy at Taquan if they had any openings there. I was hoping I could drive the tourists between the ships and Taquan. That would be a nice cushy job. But Wendy said that they had all the help they needed. "But wait.....let me make a call to someone," she said.

So here I am, on the dock, Berth I, at the Regent Ship, Century, standing in the rain. Note the smile on my face, though.

I work for Experience Alaska Tours. We stand on the docks, rain or shine, holding up the sign for the tour that the passengers booked on the ships for the different crab feasts that we offer. The passengers/tourists seek me out, I take their tickets and make sure that they get on the correct bus that will take them to their destination.

All of our tours are to the George Inlet Lodge for All You Can Eat Crab Feasts. The differences between the tours are: 1) drive to the lodge by bus, hop on a boat for an hour and a half round trip boat ride out to the crab pots and back to the lodge for an all you can eat Dungeoness Crab Feast, then a bus ride back to the ship; 2) drive to the lodge by bus where you are escorted to a private dining room for drinks, hors d' oeuvres, and all you can eat Dungeoness Crab Feast, then a 20 minute flight-seeing tour on the airplane back to Taquan and a bus ride back to the ship; 3) bus ride out to Taquan, hop on a Beaver and have a 20 minute flight-seeing tour landing at the lodge where you are escorted to a private dining room for drinks, hors d' oeuvres and all you can eat Dungeoness Crab Feast, then a bus ride back to the ship.

The other day, I was invited to go along on the drive/drive (number 1, above) tour.

This is the boat that we took out to the crab pots. They set the pots at 5am each morning so that by the time we get out there, hopefully there will be plenty of crab in the pots for us to see. Asako was our tour guide that day. She gives us her tour speech and we hope we will be able to see whales or eagles. We were lucky with the eagles that day.

This is where the crab pots are

There was no wind and the water was like glass. The picture to the right shows us coming up to the area where the crab pots are. At the end of the day, they release the crabs that were caught in these pots. These crabs are here just to let us see and/or hold if we want to. They get the crab that we eat from other pots.

Asako pulling up a crab pot


Hooking up the rope to the pulley

Asako asks for a volunteer to help with pulling in the crab pots. She then explains how to tell the difference between the males and females. They can only keep the males that are 6 inches across as they are the mature males. Anything else is thrown back (I knew that from watching "The Deadliest Catch").

It was a very interesting tour. I'm glad that I was able to ride along. I was also VERY glad that I was able to participate in the All You Can Eat Crag Feast! Those Dungies are very delicious. Just for fun, the lodge has a contest to see which table of 4 can eat the most by having everyone pile their shells in the bowl in the middle of the table. They then measure the height to determine the winner. MY table won!! Whoo Hoo!! Well, okay, maybe we cheated a little bit. They tell us that there has to be crab shells on top. They don't say what can be on the bottom. So we put our bowl on top of a pint beer glass and we won with a height of 17 1/2 inches (yeah, and we had a lot of shells too. those people can realy eat!!). Our prize was we were allowed to get up in front of everyone and do the "crab dance". Very fun.

But soon we had to climb the 79 stairs straight up to the road and catch the bus back to the ship.