South of Juneau along Alaska’s Inside Passage the first city is Petersburg. “City” is a relative term. Fewer than 3,000 people live there.

But it certainly qualifies as a city to me because Petersburg is the first place in three days on the water that we had cellular or wifi access. I needed it to send is my weekly article to HealthCentral as well as to transmit the last three photo essays in this series and to deal with 250 emails that had come in since I was in Juneau.

Petersburg doesn’t get many tourists because the big cruise ships can’t squeeze through the narrow channel. But we could on our small cruise ship, which was just one of hundreds of other small ships in the harbor of this fishing village.

One of Petersburg's Harbors

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As we arrived in port we passed the normal marker buoys. But these buoys were occupied.

A Crowd of Sea Lions

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Petersburg is just the right size to get around on foot, which is just what I did. After finding the city library with its fast Internet connection, I walked through town to a trail that wanders through the muskeg bog on the town’s edge and made a two or three mile loop hike. The most attractive view there was of something that from its name you might think wasn’t so pretty.

A Skunk Cabbage in Flower Looks Prettier than it Smells

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But the best of the day for me was the trip through the channel into Petersburg. Two views warmed my heart.

Tongass National Forest, the largest national forest in the United States, surrounded us. In this forest you can rent one of 20 cabins from the Petersburg Ranger District for just $15 to $20 a day — although the cost of getting there is a bit higher. You can reach most of these cabins only by boat or floatplane, so they are ideal when you want to immerse yourself in the solitude of the wild. The view of this cabin right on Frederick Sound further inspired my quest to find an isolated vacation cabin in Colorado this summer. Or maybe one of the Tongass cabins next summer.

A Forest Service Cabin for Rent on the Inside Passage

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A few minutes later Captain Jeff called out that a bald eagle was beginning to cross the bow from starboard to port side, where I was standing by with my camera. I captured this image.

A Bald Eagle Flies Before the Ship

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Amazingly, the weather continued to be sunny and warm. While Petersburg usually gets about 110 inches of rain a year, we didn’t get any on Friday or in fact anywhere on the Inside Passage so far.