Jupiter’s crew determines that pinnipeds and people – sea lions and sailors – do not commune well, and after two days of curiosity, close eyeballing, hearing and smelling one another at the Inian Islands, both species agree to disagree about most things.

Many sea lions forage and feed around Jupiter, worrying the crew about an intentional boarding of the swim step or cockpit. Sea lion size belies their intertidal agility.

Pelican, Alaska

We decamp to the incongruously named town of Pelican, one of the least visited and most intriguing boardwalk empires in Southeast Alaska. Here we discover a fishing port tight tucked against soaring cliffs, and lifted from the littoral by a thousand pilings carrying everything above the highest high water, and connecting everyone with a robust plank boulevard called Salmon Way.

The fleet is in, and Jupiter is tied up on the transient float with watermen attending their gear and cleaning their boats. The town of 60 permanent residents swells in summer to possibly more.

When a visiting boat – perhaps a yacht – arrives, the entire population, overlooking the harbor, knows. When strangers walk the boardwalk from end to end, the crew is paired to their vessel.

Pelican and other isolated towns act like crab traps – easy to enter, but difficult to leave. Some who meant to stop only briefly have never left.

Pelican has several attractions—all involving salmon fishing—but the most alluring is Rose’s Bar and Grill, open daily from 4 to 11. Jupiter’s esurient crew arrives at 5, opens the door and reads the room: empty seats at the end of the bar with full shots set out like bait, two fishermen quietly working Pabst cans and shots, and the regnant bartender playing cribbage between pours with someone resembling a former orthodox priest.

We stake claim to vacant seats between the bait and the trollers, and order up a couple of shots in a futile effort to merge with postmeridial patrons. Soon we are exchanging hazy recollections and inflated fables with the fishermen, learning the lore of Rose’s Bar and its legendary proprietor, Rose Miller.

It’s Reputation is Too Big to Fit in a Tiny Alaskan Town

According to our Blue Ribbon bar mates, “Rosies” was previously one of the most violent and outlandish bars in Alaska, attracting tempestuous fishermen, lush loggers, angry itinerants and all manner of bad actors and actions.

Rose kept an axe under the bar and would used it if provoked. We ask our bartender if she still has the axe to which she retorts that she has many sorts of deterrent within reach.

The ceiling, previously incised with names of fishermen who perished at sea, also held defaced dollar bills. Uninitiated carousers might be persuaded to mount the bar to pin currency to the rafters during which they would be pantsed by Rose. Women often danced on the bar provoking a fever among long liners, trollers, gillnetters, and seiners. Loggers were oblivious.

Get Up to Alaska—You’re Too Wild for Down Here

Our Pelican pals, and best barmate friends for life, tell of their wild youths, fascination with fishing, fear of heights, and love of high seas. They are trollers, fishing the expensive line-caught Kings aboard their tight and tidy boat. The night wears on through a downpour of pizzas and chile, burgers and beers and shots.

We learn that sea lions launch on to the decks of trollers, crash about, destroy many things and are difficult to dispatch.

Later, a young couple arrives and post-up unsteadily at the baited stools to our left. They ask why the shots are already there. The bartender reminds them that they ordered those shooters hours ago and then left.

Breakfast and Beans

A wet morning follows a short night. But a hot and hearty breakfast is available at the Lisianski Inlet Café where Raven Radio (KCAW) is broadcasting forecasts, tides and buoy observations, and personal messages to marooned coastal communities.

As we return to Jupiter to slip our lines and depart into the fog and foam, we stop by the Cool Beans Coffee boat run by genial Pelican parents who have replaced the normal workings of their vessel with a barista’s dream frother, burr grinder and brewer.

Raise a Glass to Rose 1933 – 2024

On Sunday, June 23, 2024 Rose Pauline Miller (Rosie) went to heaven to help make heaven a rousing place just like she did to every place she went in Alaska.

Rose’s Obituary in the
Juneau Empire