Greetings from
Alaska! Jim and I, along with his sister Judy and brother-in-law Gil
are on a trip along the Alaska Marine Highway. This ferry system is
the only way to reach all of the towns along the southeast coast of
Alaska unless you fly in. There are no roads or bridges just the
islands and towns located along deep fjords.
I'm writing this
September 24th while aboard the M/V Columbia. Somewhere
about 18 hours north of Bellingham, WA, heading south. This highway
system consists solely of ferries which transport passengers, cars
and cargo all along the Southeast of Alaska, from Skagway to
Bellingham. They connect with other ferry systems in British Columbia
and have other routes to the Southwestern area of Alaska. Life
aboard is very interesting. Some people sleep in their sleeping bags
on the Solarium deck on lawn chairs or pitch a tent on the deck...if
you have duct tape to anchor it down! They have a snack bar and
dining room, observation lounges and a movie theater. Dogs are
allowed but have to stay down on the car deck in their cars or kennel
and only get potty breaks at certain times (paper towels are provided
:). At breakfast today we saw humpbacks and dolphins along with
gorgeous scenery! ferryalaska.com
We started out trip
on Sept 4th, flying out of Seattle to Whitehorse, YT.
Whitehorse is home to the Yukon Quest, a 1000 mile dog sled race to
Fairbanks. www.yukoninfo.com We stayed there 1 night and took the bus/train south to Skagway, AK.
This is not an ordinary train...it is the White Pass and Yukon
Railroad which has been in operation since 1900. It is a narrow gauge
steam train that was built in 2 years 2 months and 2 days, between
1898-1900! It runs between Skagway and Whitehorse and was built to
move men, supplies and ore during the Gold Rush in the Klondike. It
was an amazing feat of engineering and back breaking hard work and is
still in operation today with the original cars and track wpyr.com Train pictures
We spent a few days
in Skagway, the Garden City of Alaska, exploring and learning about
the Klondike Gold Rush and that fascinating time in history.
skagway.com Once you look past all the “Swag” on sale for the
tourists off the cruise ships, there is a lot to see. (I stopped
counting jewelery stores after 15 in the 1st few blocks off the
docks). The NPS has restored lots of buildings all over town and they
are used as museums and art galleries or have reenactments or
documentaries in them. It is called the Klondike Gold Rush National
Historic Park. We also took a tour of an original brothel, the Red
Onion Saloon. We loved Jewell Gardens. Owned by a miner who decided
that growing fruits and vegetables for was a better way to make
money. He introduced rhubarb to the area. It gets really, really,
really big there and grows all over town! His homestead/farm is now a
museum/garden and glass blowing studio. www.jewellgardens.com It
was a great introduction to our Alaska trip.
Skagway pictures
On Friday, 9/9, we
took a short ferry ride to Haines, AK. You can drive from Skagway to
Haines, but it is over 350 miles. The ferry only takes an hour!
Haines was founded by missionaries who came there with John Muir, the
naturalist. visithaines.com
We stayed at the
Captains Choice motel. Very nice if you like 1960's motel décor. We
rented a car in Haines and explored town…. They have a Hammer
Museum (yes really) and a nice history museum. Then we found a farmers
market and explored along the Chilkoot and Chilkat rivers. The area
is home to over 400 resident bald eagles which swells to over 2000 in
November along the Chilkat. Wish I could come back for the eagle
festival then! We also saw a brown bear sow and her cub catching
salmon on the Chilkat river and over 35 eagles feasting on salmon in
the estuary. We also got our first real introduction to the Tlingit
(pronounced klingit) native peoples history while in Haines. We were
able to visit the WhaleHouse in Klukwan. It has been beautifully
restored and has many wall carvings, panels and totems, unseen for
decades. Haines pictures
Monday we got back
on the ferry (8pm) for our journey to Petersburg, AK. This was an
overnight trip (27 hours) so we got a cabin. It was real small and
had 2 bunks. Guess who had to sleep on top? I'll tell you …..its
been a long time since I had to get out of bed via a ladder in the
dark! We stopped briefly in Juneau and Sitka (in the dark). The ferry
we were on, M/V Columbia developed mechanical problems on that trip
and it actually took 9 hours longer to get to Petersburg. This was a
blessing in disguise as we got in at 10 am instead of midnight. And
we also got to sail through the “Narrows” during the daylight.
Quite a sight. It is the narrowest passage for ships anywhere along
the Inside Passage and has to be sailed at slack tide because of the
current. It is marked with beacons by the Coast Guard for navigation
and requires very skilled steering.
Petersburg is a
bustling small town on Mitkof Island. It was founded around 1897 by
Norwegians who settled there to fish and farm. It once had 8
canneries and still has an active commercial fishing fleet.
www.petersburg.org We
rented a car here also and explored the island ….all 31 miles of
paved highway and some logging roads. We hiked into the rain forest
(in the rain) to the Trumpeter Swan observation area (100s stop here
in the winter) and had our first look at the muskeg. This is low
growing plants in a very wet, waterlogged landscape. In the forest
the trees are very tall and some are misshapen. Many are covered in
green moss and what looks like spanish moss hanging down. It is a
temperate rain forest, very dense and overgrown. We stayed at the
Waterfront B&B in Petersburg, so named because it sets on pilings
built over the water in the harbor. We had hot homemade breakfasts
there and a hot tub, so the owners Sammy and Leroy got our vote for
the best accommodations so far. The shopping and museum were great,
too. Lots of native and pioneer history. We wanted to go see the
LeConte Glacier but the we decided to forgo the boat ride as the
weather was awful and the glacier was covered in clouds.
Petersburg pictures
Next stop, Wrangell,
AK. Our short ferry ride took us through the Wrangell Narrows, which
I thought looked just as skinny as the passage into Petersburg but
was much longer. We stayed at the Grand View B&B. It was about 2
miles from the center of town and was built right on a beach covered
with lots of rocks, driftwood and sea glass. Our room was called the
Moose room. I've never seen so many sizes, shapes, colors or
materials in the making of moose. Leslie's breakfasts were amazing
and the view was spectacular! She said there was a whole pod of Orcas
out in front just a few days before we got there….of course! We saw
our only Alaskan sunset over the beach there. We had great weather
and wanted to Laconte glacier by boat from Wrangell but moose season
had started 3 days before and no one was interested in taking us. The
Anan Bear Reserve http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/r10/specialplaces/?cid=fsbdev2_038752 is located up the Stikine River, about a 30
minute boat ride from Wrangell. However the salmon runs were over in
the area and the bears were gone. So we explored the island by car
again (about 50 miles this time) and learned more history.
wrangellchamber.org Wrangell is the 3rd oldest
community in Alaska, (Kodiak and Sitka are older) Logging was the big
industry there until it was shut down in the 90s. Now they have
several harbors, huge marine lifts and dry docks used to repair the
large commercial fishing fleet. The best place to visit was the
Petroglyphs beach. There are ancient petroglyphs carved into the
rocks and lots of sea glass to find. Shopping sucked as all the
stores were closed but the food at the Stikine Inn was the best on
our entire trip. Fresh salmon, monster burgers and halibut fish and
chips, yummm! Wrangell pictures
While in Wrangell we
got call from the ferry office, telling us our sailing on Friday out
of Ketchikan was going to be delayed 2 days because of the mechanical
problems with the Columbia. It was getting farther and farther behind
schedule. This led to some scrambling, changing plane reservations in
Seattle and accommodations in Ketchikan. Everything worked out and we
left for Ketchikan on Monday.
Ketchikan, on
Revillagigedo Island, is the biggest community we've visited so far.
It is the 1st, or in our case the last stop on the marine
highway in Alaska. They have stoplights and a Walmart. I don't think
that is anything to brag about though. visit-ketchikan.comThe old
waterfront area has been restored to represent the heydays of the
1800's and early 1900s. Creekside was the red light district and had
a lot of “boarding” houses on the edge of the creek connected by
elevated boardwalks over the water. They was even a Married Mans Lane
for discreet comings and goings. Now the area has the best shopping!
Lots of native art and SWAG. The mountains come right down to the
harbor area and the houses are built into the sides of the hills,
with boardwalks on stilts for roads and stairways that climb to
heaven. The salmon were still running in the creek and there were
lots of them swimming upstream and a lot dead ones on the bottom of
the creek and on the rocks. We saw 4 harbor seals feasting on the
fish.
Ketchikan has the
most and best preserved native carved totem poles in all of Alaska.
They are lots of different places to see them including Totem Bight
State park and the Totem Heritage Center www.ketchikanmuseums.org.
Totem Bight is a model native village built by the CCC starting in
1938 through WW II. Its purpose and that of the Heritage Center was
to restore, repair or replicate totems that were left to rot in
abandoned native villages in the area. Many totems were re-carved
from the originals (then they were stored under cover so they would
not deteriorate any more). This also served to educate the next
generations of Tlingit, Tsimshian and Haida native peoples, to keep
alive the art of carving and their heritage. The discovery center is
run by the NPS and they showed a great documentary on the wilderness
areas in the Tongass National Forest. It is the largest National
Forest in the country (www.fs.usda.gov/tongass
, 17,000,000 acres) and the largest contiguous temperate rainforest
in the world and they also had wonderfully informative displays of
the subsistence lifestyle of the native people and their culture and
artwork. Ketchikan pictures
All in all it has
been an incredible trip. Everybody asks what my favorite place was
and it is impossible to choose. Each community had something unique
and special to offer and we had so much fun exploring! And you have
to go to all the towns to really capture the history and atmosphere
that is “Southeast”
(I'm posting this
with just a few pictures as it is going to take awhile to edit all of
them. Stay tuned for a blog of picture links, soon)
