In March 2001, I took my first trip to Alaska. I was still living in Delaware at the time. I flew to Bellingham, and then made the 36-hour ferry ride north to Alaska's First City. Seven and a half years later, the place hasn't changed. It still rains a lot, the town is a bit run down, and the people are gritty.
I actually almost moved to Ketchikan. Back in May 2003, I bought a ferry ticket only as far north as Ketchikan. I arrived on Mother's Day, so I made a phone call to my mom from the ferry terminal (where I'm now writing this). The conversation went as follows:
Me: Hi Mom. Happy Mother's Day.
Mom: Hi. Thanks.
Me: Guess where's I'm at?
Mom: New Mexico?
(A quick aside: I had told my family and friends that I was leaving Texas, my home for two years, for New Mexico. I made a slight detour, to say the least. Now, back to the reenactment...)
Me: No. Farther.
Mom: Arizona?
Me: Nope. Farther.
Mom: California?
Me: Farther.
Mom: (With a sense of hesitation in her voice) Alaska?
Me: That's it!
After this conversation, I drove around town for a bit. It didn't take me long to realize that if I really wanted to make a go of things in Alaska and have things work out, Ketchikan probably wasn't the right place to plant roots. I returned to the ferry terminal to buy a ticket to Juneau later that afternoon. I arrived in the Capital City the next day, and the rest, as they say, is history.
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