Thursday, August 26, 2010

I'd say Greetings from Sitka in Russian

...but I don't speak Russian.


We were up early-ish and off to see the small, quaint, yet with its seedy parts town of Sitka.  With a map in hand we set out. Only getting lost once – which is actually very hard to do in Sitka. 
We saw the main totem park – as Blueberry commented, “Only one totem?”. Still, I’m a sucker for totem poles. We couldn’t get very many good shots because there were several people milling about so we just said, screw it and thought we’d get back. 
Sitka’s claim to fame is this is the Russian town in which the purchase of Alaska took place. That is to say, when the US purchased Alaska from the Russians the exchange took place here. The Russians, they said, were thrilled to off load the “waste land” as they called it.  Months after the off loading and when Alaska was in US hands, gold was found here. 

We managed to find out way to an old Russian cemetery too. Fascinating.  Many of the graves we saw were from the late 1800’s.  Poorly kept cemetery for the most part, yet it was still beautiful. 

Half way through the day we were looking for post cards when we discovered there’s a volcano quite close.  The clouds wouldn’t allow us to see said volcano, so we bought postcards to “prove” it. They must wait for the one clear day a year and shoot those post card photos. 
Tomorrow we’re off to Ketchikan.  We’re there a measly 5 hours so we’ll be getting off the boat early and heading in to see the sights.

2 comments:

BigBro said...

Are Claudia and Mark/Van with you??? or just camera shy??

Vicky said...

So are you now an expert on international relations because you saw Russia?