Now that we've sewn the US and Canada together (Vermont to Montreal to New York to Vancouver to Washington to Canadian Waters to Alaska) we've finally found a home in Ketchikan for a few days. We've been trying to mix with the locals but it's hard to find them amongst all the cruisers as there are as many as five ships in town a day. Luckily they leave pretty promptly by four o'clock. Our second home to our wet tent has been 'The New York Cafe' were we sit for a couple of hours each morning reading, catching up on e-mail and basically drying out and planning the day. We've chatted with a few people that are passing by Ketchikan but one that stood out to me was a man sitting with his wife and two beautiful girls. They were on one of the ships celebrating his sisters 40th birthday but looking at us enviously as we talked about our coming travels. He said that they've traveled quite a bit in their yester years and he says it's the people that you meet that make the most impact as opposed to the places you go.

That statement holds very true for our Bellingham visit, the Washington town we left out of five days ago. Although it was short we meet an amazing person that I truly believe kicked this trip off to a good start. After finally finding our way into town from the airport we decided the best way to save money and play too was to rent bikes to get us to the camp ground instead of paying for a taxi and then renting bikes. At first it sounded like a great idea but after loading fifty plus pounds on our backs the idea lost some charm. At first it was a laugh out loud experience of trying to balance the weight and ride the bike- picture a clown with three clowns stacked on his shoulders- quite a sight. The experience went from looking pretty ridiculous to silence as we tried pumping up the hills. At one point Ryan got so pissed off that he decided to loose weight where ever he could and started dumping all of our water on the side of the road. It was right about this time that our Savior MaryAnne pulled along side and offered to help. We willing accepted and dumped all of our belongings (passports, wallets, cameras, computers, the whole lot) into the back of her truck and she said she'd meet us at the camp entrance which was right around the corner. First of all note to self- think twice about giving up all valuable belongings. It turned out that MaryAnne was a bonified angel and ended up helping us return the packs when we needed to catch the ferry and even packed us some survival homemade zucchini bread for the boat trip. If I could shrink MaryAnne and put her in my pocket she would be my one allotted Luxury item.