0010 13th May - Prince Rupert to Juneau

Once we had boarded our Alaska Marine Highway ferry Matanuska at about 5 pm, we settled in to our cabin, then had a beer in the bar before having some Salmon for dinner (what else ? !).  Our friends Raya and Arie were on board, headed for Skagway, and our new friends from the campsite, Chris and Katheryn,  were also on board, so we swapped stories for a while, also chatting with Joe who was on a bucket list journey and getting off at first stop in Ketchikan to go fishing, before heading on up to Anchorage in his Prius where we hope to catch up with him again.  As dark descended we kept talking because we were due into Ketchikan at 11.30 pm, and didn’t want to miss anything !  Putting the clocks back an hour for Alaskan time meant we were pretty tired by the time we docked, and soon after that we went to bed.  It was raining in Ketchikan, but as it does that for most of the year, that was not surprising !  Still not very cold though.

 

 A good nights sleep in our cabin, and we were back on deck by 8 am to find us docking in Wrangell.  Still raining, and not a lot to see. By then it was time for breakfast.

Chris and Katheryn are sleeping up on the “tent deck” – An area on the boats here you can either pitch a tent, or, undercover, stretch out on sun lounges or hang hammocks.  It is a great system, and not only is the deck warm from the heated rooms below, but there are even electric heaters in the ceiling, and it REALLY is warm up there !  Definitely an option to try in the future !!

 Soon after leaving Wrangell we went through a really narrow section called the Dry Strait, or Wrangell Narrows.  This is really dramatic for a big ship, and must be even more so for the big cruise ships, but at last we were seeing what I had expected from the Inside Passage. So much more dramatic and scenic than the section from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert.   After Dry Strait we passed into Ideal Cove, and all through this section that are isolated fishing lodges and tiny hamlets of 3 or 4 houses – Quite a place to live, and kind of hard to run down to the corner store for a pint of milk or a paper !! But beautiful, nevertheless.

 After an hour or two through these narrows, we came into Petersburg – A town mostly populated by Norwegians, apparently !!  There is a big festival there this weekend as apparently the Norwegians are celebrating beating up the Danes some time in the past, so there were a few Norwegians on our ferry who got off there to join in the party !!

After a few cars and people got off, and a few more boarded, we were off again – Next stop Juneau, at about 8 pm tonight.   Our path then widened out considerably, and we spent a lot of the day cruising across the Cape Strait, heading North.  Still raining, but slowly clearing.  By mid afternoon we started to see a few spouts of water, and for several hours we saw lots of Dall’s Porpoises.  These have the colouring

of Killer Whales, white and black, but are much smaller and with a small dorsal fin, but, like most dolphins, they love to play around the vessel.  Then we saw some humpback whales !!  Not too close, but it created great delight for everyone to see them – I missed any photos as my reactions were too slow, but I did catch Katheryn’s hands clapping in delight as one breached not far away from the ferry !  If you look closely in the photo you can see the white water where the whale had just dived !!

A fun day and afternoon, chatting with people from all over the place, and generally have a great time with them all.  Hopefully we will bump into most of them on the road.  Chris and Katheryn are heading into McCarthy in the Wrangell – St Elias NP (just to the south of Tok) to work, and I would love to go in there as it is supposed to be spectacular – And I now have the car to get in there on the dirt roads !!

The longer distance (ie larger) Alaska Marine Highway ferries have camping facilities on board !  There is a covered area up on deck in the back where people can either sleep on day beds (like you would find poolside in resorts) in your own sleeping bags, or you can actually pitch your tent on the deck !  No one did that on this trip, but you apparently use gaffer tape to tape the tent down (tent pegs being a bit difficult in the steel deck !!).  Several people were in the covered area though, and they were SO warm – There are heaters in the ceiling, and the floor is really warm from the heated galley below – People were walking around in bare feet and shorts up there, even in the middle of the night when it was really cold and raining outside !  Definitely the way to go if you are trying to save money, as all this is totally free.  And of course there are also the reclining chairs down in the main cabin if you want to go that way instead of taking a full cabin like we did.

Now into Juneau for a couple of days, before a trip out to Sitka by ferry, and then heading to Haines to start to drive north up the Alcan Highway towards Anchorage.

We arrived in Juneau, waved and tooted goodbye (for now) to all our new friends who were leaning over the railings as we drove up the ramp on to dry land, and set off to the campground at Mendenhall Lake, at the foot of the famous Mendenhall Glacier.  Found it quite easily – CLOSED !!!!   Oh no !   Disappointed, we had a quick look at the lake and glacier, then went back just a few 100 yards to another RV park, which was very nice – Just not the one we wanted to stay in !  Corinna the host could not have been nice or more informative, and it really was a very pleasant campsite.  So we set up camp for the night, with wifi, had supper, and went to bed.

We did find out that the Glacier campsite was due to open the next day, so we planned to stay there another night. 

We also found out later that the route the ferries follow up through the Inside Passage is totally different from the route followed by the big cruise ships.  The exciting narrows section through Dry Creek is just too narrow for the cruise ships, as are several other sections, so I am now even more pleased we have done this on ferries and not on a cruise ship – But more of that later !

 

Photos here : https://picasaweb.google.com/117739775480775657932/0010PrinceRupertToJuneau?authkey=Gv1sRgCLWYrMjS_v-ExwE#