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Alaska, July 2004
Page 1 of 2. « Previous | [1] 2 | Next » I spent a week with Matt and Kati on an Alaska Marine Highway ferry from Bellingham to Juneau. The ferries have cabins with beds, but those fill up very fast (by December for the next summer) so we camped out on the deck, along with many others. The boats have a room called the solarium that is covered and heated, and people camp out in sleeping bags on deck chairs or the carpeted floor, or you can do like we did and bring a tent and pitch it in a tent area. The tent-on-deck option isn't bad, except for the noise--on our boat the tent area felt/sounded like it was right over the engines. The boats are simple, but have restaurants, a bar, a theater, a Forest Service naturalist giving lectures, a GPS/map system that shows your position at all times, and a friendly staff. An interesting bunch of folks take these ferries. On our ship was a group of Turkish young men going up to work in a fish processing plant, a couple of Swiss women who had just spent a few weeks at an English school in Vancouver BC, German backpackers, Alaskans going home, random tourists like us, etc. We originally were going to stop off in Ketchikan, Wrangell, and Petersburg, but we noticed that we'd only have a few hours in the first two places, and that we'd rather be in Ketchikan for 4th of July than Petersburg, so we changed our itenerary and got off the boat in Ketchikan. We spent almost two days there, and then got on the next boat and went to Juneau. Ketchikan is a pretty little fishing town with a rich history from fishing and mining, and Creek Street has cool funky vintage buildings overhanging the creek. It also rains, a lot. Remember, I'm a Seattlite saying that it rains a lot. They have something like 13 feet of rain a year there. We had good weather for the 4th (and had front-row seats for the parade through downtown) but the 5th it rained cats and dogs. Buckets. Sheets of rain. We found a local cafe and drank hot chocolate and played cards and read about the area, and went to museums and other indoor attractions. Juneau is a stunning town when you get your first glimpse. It's nestled in the forested hills near the Mendenhall Glacier with fishing boats, ferries, and cruise ships plying the waters. All the streets in town arch up the hillsides, dotted with houses painted all different colors. We went to a salmon bake, toured the state history museum (best museum we saw), wandered around downtown, found the house Matt lived in for a few years when he was very young, hiked on trails around the Mendenhall glacier, and drove up the coastline north of town. From Juneau, Matt and Kati flew on to Anchorage to continue their Alaska adventure, but I had to return to Seattle.
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