Someone once told me that to really see Alaska, it is important to view it from the land and from the sea. We planned to take advantage of the sea views while traveling on the Alaska Marine Highway System in segments:
Skagway, AK to Juneau, AK (us + car/trailer) - about six hours with slow ferry
Juneau, AK to Sitka, AK (just us) - about four and one-half hours (fast ferry)
Sitka, AK to Juneau, AK (just us) - same as above
Juneau, AK to Prince Rupert, BC (us + car/trailer) - one day, ten hours
During this time, we traveled on the Malispino car ferry, the Fairweather fast ferry, and a twin of the Malispino, the Taku car ferry. It takes some planning (I made the ferry arrangements last December), but we still agree it was worth it--both for not having to drive the entire highway again, but also to provide us with a different view of Alaska. Our only regret is not being able to get off at more of the islands like Haines or Petersburg to see more of the Inside Passage towns. This type of vacation depends on the ferry schedules as you are at their mercy, but it can be done.
We begin this leg of our journey in Skagway, AK. We built in some buffer time in traveling from Valdez to Tok and then Tok to Skagway in case of road issues, but arrived in Skagway on July 12 on time. Our RV park in Skagway, Garden City RV Park, was probably a rip-off at $36.50/night with GoodSam discount. It did provide full hook-ups on mainly gravel sites (typical for AK and Northern CAN) and a laundry, but no cable, no Internet (both out of service), and a part-time person to oversee the campground. There were at least one-half of the sites as rentals and seasonals in this park, but Skagway is mainly a seasonal type of town. During the winter, it has about 250 people typically. While we were there, it swelled to over 10,000 people because of the cruise ships (4 of them) in port at any given time. In fact, the stores are provided with schedules of cruise ship dockings because of so many people coming into town. We spent that particular "10,000 people in town" day with a park ranger, walking a nearby deserted town called Dyea, once a sister gold rush town to Skagway. Our ranger saw recent bear activity, so that made for a fun walk in the woods--yippee! Most cruise people try to complete a walking town tour, shop or see the sites in the short time they are in port, so the town can be crowded. There are more fine jewelry stores per square inch than in any town we've seen yet--similar to St. Martin in the Caribbean, for example. I enjoyed the quilt store with cross-stitch and the bookstore. All three in-town museums are top-notch and worth the time.
Most of downtown Skagway is actually under federal park management and restoration except for one of the main attractions, the White Pass & Yukon Railway. We did not take the train as we had driven over the same terrain through the White Summit Pass, but many people do. Brad did a great job along the pass; I had no problem letting him get out of the car on his side for pictures from the summit. There are so many adventure outfitters here that there were actually bikes taken to the summit for people to ride down the other side--unbelieveable as it was a high pass. I can't believe that the miners had to transport one year's worth of food through the Klondike in order to be allowed to mine for gold. So many died including thousands of horses that Dead Horse Gulch was named appropriately.
Our activities while in Skagway included visiting all museums, shopping downtown, buying a gallon of milk for $6.09, and visiting nearby Dyea. I thought Brad would have a heart attack about spending that much for a gallon of milk. He obviously loves milk! All in all a good visit to a touristy type of town with strong historical ties to the Klondike as a key entry point in the Gold Rush Days of 1898 and excellent tours from rangers (we took two of them) which explained much about the town and the Gold Rush. They are still restoring buildings at this time, and it is a slow process. One other interesting Skagway site was Jewell Gardens, once a farm in the valley which supplied produce and milk to the growing Skagway, now a garden and glass-blowing exhibition all created by a visionary owner and a nice respite from the crowded town.
After three days in Skagway, we were ready to see Alaska by sea. We checked into the Alaska Marine Highway System at 5:30 a.m. to have our vehicle measurements verified. We were aligned according to our point of departure, checked our tickets with the office, so we were lined up for Juneau. Extra care was taken with our long vehicles to make sure we didn't drag on the ramp and that we were positioned to make turns inside the cardeck of the ferry. Brad did a great job of maneuvering the truck and 30' Airstream with help from the ferry staff who were as concerned as he. The trip from Skagway to Juneau with one stop at Haines took us from 7 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. During that trip, we did spot whales doing something called "bubbling" where they blow air to trap the krill into the air bubbles, and then they scoop them up into their mouths. There was a forest service ranger on-board who noted animal sightings and presented programs during the trip. We did see seven humpback whales bubbling, which was very unusual. You could count the spouts from from their blow holes and watch for seabirds hovering around them as well. None did huge jumps out of the water, but we could see their whale tails. We also saw lighthouses, a few eagles and a bear.
On the larger ferries, the pace is smooth and slow. Most people read, play cards, take pictures, walk around as there are outside decks around the ship, snack and watch movies if the ferry ride is long enough. Brad and I also enjoy meeting people and learning about the area. Many people who travel on the ferries are local, rather like traveling by COTA bus! You can learn a great deal from the locals in Alaska. We have decided they are the best tour guides.
We disembarked from the ferry in Juneau. Even though it is Alaska's capital, it is not accessible by road over the icefields and mountains. There are roads here, but they end at the mountain range. Everyone comes by boat, seaplane, or Alaska air! Juneau as a town isn't a big cruise draw like Skagway, but it has all of the typical capital buildings and is smaller than Columbus. We found an RV park near the ferry terminal and Mendenhall Glacier called Spruce Grove RV Park. At this park, they are willing to check on your RV in case you decide to travel to other Inside Passage towns, which we were doing.
Our first night in Juneau, we learned about a salmon and halibut bake on the other side of Juneau, so we set up camp and drove through Juneau to this out-of-the-way location. We walked into a time-warp at the Thane Ore Mine and only two other people were there, but it was the best salmon and halibut we have had in Alaska. This guy has been cooking there for close to 30 years, and it shows. The locals all know about it, and they have some cruise ship diners, but we really enjoyed its location. He also gave us a tip about seeing salmon run about 200 yards from the restaurant at Sheep Creek, so we took a look. It was hard to see the water for all the salmon trying to run up Sheep Creek--amazing! We found out that salmon are usually gone 1-5 years, depending upon the salmon type, and they return to spawn and die at the exact same place they entered the larger river/ocean. They can travel from Alaska as far as the Baja and Japan, but they come back to die where they were hatched. We also drove around Douglas Island across Gastineau Channel for nice views of Juneau. The Mendenhall Glacier has a wonderful Visitor's Center and walking trail, so we took that in as well. We had nice weather, so you do as much as possible when the weather is nice and sunny.
The next morning we headed to Sitka, Alaska, arriving at the ferry dock around 7 a.m., leaving our camper at Juneau at the campground and leaving our truck at the ferry terminal. We boarded the fast ferry, Fairweather, as walk-ons and took an overnight bag to stay in a hotel near the city center. We saw some beautiful lighthouses along the passage to Sitka. What a neat little town! We arrived around 12:30 p.m. and were about 5 miles from town at the ferry terminal. For $12/each, we bought round-trip tickets on the Sitka bus, which took us (and everyone else) to downtown Sitka, bed-and-breakfasts, hotels, hostels, etc. Since we didn't have a car, it was nice to have a downtown hotel room. We booked one night at a Westmark, a typical Alaska hotel which is billed like an up-scale hotel, but in reality is more like a Holiday Inn, I suppose. That is typical Alaska, and Sitka has an "old world" feel to it. We had to come into town on a Saturday afternoon (many of Sitka's stores are closed on Sundays), so we hit the ground running after dropping luggage at the hotel. The visitor center was hard to find, so we just started asking people where to go and what to see. We started at one of the Sitka National Historic Park buildings--the Russian Bishop's House, which was really interesting. The Russian Bishop's House is one of the few surviving examples of Russian colonial architecture in North America. Imperial Russia was the dominant power in the North Pacific for over 125 years. Sitka (known as New Archangel at the time) was the Russian colonial capital. The Bishop's House was completed in 1842 and was the center of Russian Orthodox Church authority in a diocese that stretched from California to Siberian Kamchatka (Wikipedia). The restoration of the building by the national park service was really beautiful--even the wallpaper was restored. The extra $4/person to go on the narrated tour is definitely worth it, if you enjoy seeing old houses.
We then walked about 6-7 blocks to the Totem Pole National Park, where we used our cell phones to learn about 11 totem poles in the park made by First Nation totem pole carvers. With their striking designs and colors, totem poles are bold statements of the identities and stories of the people who carved them. A totem pole generally served one of four purposes.
· Crest poles give the ancestry of particular family.
· History poles record the history of a clan.
· Legend poles illustrate folklore or real life experiences.
· Memorial poles commemorate a particular individual.
Totem poles did not stand along the park’s wooded trails until 1906. Between 1901 and 1903, several Native leaders from villages in southeast Alaska agreed to donate poles to Alaska’s District Governor John G. Brady for the people of Alaska. After exhibiting the poles at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition, Governor Brady sent the poles to Sitka where they were erected in the “government park”. Over the years, replicas of some of the original totem poles have been carved as the original poles deteriorated. Many of the poles now standing along the park’s wooded trails are replicas of the originals collected by Governor Brady. The original totem poles that have survived are now conserved and exhibited in Totem Hall at the park visitor center (Wikipedia).
Again, bear were sighted in the park, so we were on our toes. Finally, we returned to downtown and tried to shop at as many places as possible (OK, I did and Brad watched). I was able to go to Abby's, which was a quilt, cross-stitch and knitting shop across from the Russian Orthodox Church. The Church is right in the middle of the street and the roads go around it. It reminded me of Annapolis, MD, with the church in the center. We ate more fish and chips on the dock (by the way, excellent fish and chips are all made with Halibut fish and a beer batter of some type). We'll never order fish and chips again without checking from what type of fish they are made! On Sunday morning, we walked around town and took pictures from the 30 plus historic buildings and sites and saw a sign inviting all into the Russian Orthodox Church. That was very interesting. The language of the service was English, and the priests and cantors were going full tilt. It was very orthodox, so we felt a little out of place, but we stayed for about 20-30 minutes until their official service started. The gold icons and pictures were everywhere. Sitka as a town is really a blend of three heritages--Russian, First Nation (Alaskan Indian), and American and dates back to the early 1800s.
We returned around noon on the fast ferry to Juneau. While on board, we met up with another couple from California. She is a nurse mid-wife who has a special license in palliative care and he was retired from the CA Highway Department. She took on an assignment to do two weeks of teaching here in Alaska and brought her sixth husband! They asked if we knew pinochle, and we said no, but we were willing to learn. We spent the next five hours learning pinochle and spent about 1 hour teaching them euchre. It made the trip go fast, and we got a basic idea of the game.
Today we spent taking in some sights in Juneau. It starting raining yesterday and continued throughout the day today. We saw Mendenhall already and it wasn't a great day to be outdoors, so we drove downtown, parked the truck for 50 cents/30 minutes, and decided to shop and see a salmon hatchery. Good downtown restaurant was called The Hanger in the Wharf Shopping
Mall. We took a tour of the McCauley Fish Hatchery and enjoyed learning about the salmon runs, breeding, types of salmon, and how they return to spawn. It is a huge business in Alaska and very interesting. The hatcheries are business non-profits, designed to bolster the fishing industry--commercial, sport, and subsistence. And at the last minute, I was able to secure a seat for tomorrow at Chez Alaska, a cooking school here in Juneau. The focus is on how to incorporate Alaska seafood into your cooking of course. I hope to pick up some good recipes. Brad is going to get the oil changed in the truck! We'll stop at Subway to get lunches for the ferry (options are somewhat limited and expensive). We're leaving Juneau tomorrow afternoon on the ferry to Prince Rupert--back to Canada!
More later!
Jane and Brad
Pictures for this post
No comments:
Post a Comment