Sitka
Next day brought
us to Sitka (pop 8600). It’s on the island of the same name,
and faces the open sea. We were tendered in, as the port is too
shallow to allow our ship to dock. They use lifeboats for
tendering. I noticed a sign on the one we got in. "Tendering
capacity 90. Lifeboat capacity 150."
Here we saw the first of the totem poles.. The Tinglit tribe and some others as far south as Washington and Oregon, were the totem pole makers. The poles were never religious objects. They are more or less equivalent to historical markers. They tell the story of a family, of a famous deed, or something similar.
Sitka is the site of the original Russian settlements in Alaska, around 1800. There are still several reminders of the Russians around in the form of Russian Orthodox churches and such. The climate here has been described as "always Autumn, never rainless."
Sitka also has some strange signs.
How will you get the reward if you don’t give your name?
They may have crime problems, but I bet car theft can’t be a big one here. Where are you going to take it?
And I don’t understand this ecumenical one at all.