The Alaska Marine Highway - Alaska by car and ferry.

They do things differently in Alaska. Look at the photo again. Yes -  those tents really are set up on the back deck of a ship. This is camping out Alaskan style.

We are on board the M.V. Columbia for a 61 hour journey to Juneau, the only mainland US capital you can't reach by road. The Alaska Marine Highway is a system of inter-connecting car and passenger ferries which run from Bellingham, just north of Seattle, to Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands on the far south-western tip of the state.

The Alaska Marine Highway - a close call with catastrophe.

The MV Columbia

I am back-tracking a little with this post. I last wrote about our introduction to travelling on the Alaska Marine Highway. Click here to read about it. Today I want to tell you about the near catastrophe we had at the start of the voyage.

We left Seattle about midday for the hour and a half's drive to the ferry terminal at Bellingham. Twenty minutes later we passed a sign flashing news of an accident ahead on the freeway. The traffic slowed, crawled, inched forward once or twice, then stopped. After 15 minutes of no movement at all David eased across to the right hand exit lane and we abandoned the freeway.

The Alaska Marine Highway - Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg and the Wrangell Narrows.

Thirty-seven hours from Bellingham we make our first stop at Ketchikan. We have been in Alaskan waters for about two hours. They are no different from Canadian waters - mile upon mile (kilometre upon kilometre in Canada) of spruce tree lined shores. Nothing else - no towns, no houses, no signs of life at all save for the ubiquitous bald eagles perched high in the trees scanning for prey.

The Mt Roberts Goldbelt Tramway in Juneau, Alaska

'On a clear day you can see forever'- perhaps not forever but from the top of the Goldbelt Mt Roberts Tramway in Juneau, Alaska it feels like you can. The view is magnificent. Looking across to the Chilkat Mountains the snowy fleece lays like a last reminder of winter, but down in the Gastineau Channel the huddle of cruise ships tells us summer is not far away. We are here in late June when the flowering fireweed plants respond to the warm days. We are told they will bloom through summer and when they stop winter will have returned.

Juneau, Alaska - The Mendenhall Glacier, Glacier Bay National Park and the Shrine of St Therese

Juneau, Alaska is the only mainland U.S capital which is not accessible by road.  While there has been much talk over the years of connecting the city to the rest of North America it hasn't happened. Consequently there are still only two ways to arrive; one is by air and the other is by boat. We came by boat, on the Alaska Marine Highway. (For my posts on the Alaska Marine Highway click here.)

The Alaska Marine Highway - Juneau to Sitka by car ferry.

It is 5 a.m. The car ferry from Juneau to Sitka departs at 6.30 a.m. Our tickets say we should arrive two hours before the departure time. With the ferry terminal ten minutes by car from our hotel, we were up at 4 a.m.

Sitka, Alaska: Totem Poles, Eagles and Russians

The Russian Legacy

In 1867 the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in one of the best (or worst) land deals history has ever recorded. You knew that, I'm sure  -  but did you know that in some of Alaska's towns the Russian legacy lives on?

In the 18th Century, Russia established a few small colonial outposts in Alaska. Sea otter pelts were in great demand amongst the upper classes in China making the harvesting of Alaskan sea otters a lucrative business. However by the mid 19th Century the sea otter population had declined and Russia was in debt following its defeat in the Crimean War. It offered to sell Alaska to the U.S for the sum of $7.2 million. At the time many Americans believed they had got the worst end of the deal, so much so that the purchase became known as 'Seward's folly' after William H Seward, the U.S. Secretary of State who signed the deal. A few hundred years later, the deal doesn't look so bad.

Haines, Alaska - Moose, bears, bald eagles and Gold Rush.

I had high hopes for Haines. The internet, the brochures, trip advisor and everyone I talked to said Haines was the wildlife capital of Alaska. All I can say is that there must have been a coup because despite promises of moose, bears and bald eagles the sum total of our successful animal spotting during three days spent in Haines was one very, very brief glimpse of a bear, a couple of swans and lots of sea-gulls. The bear may have been a grizzly, which was at least something, but we weren't sure.

I spent hours on-line researching wildlife in Haines before our trip. I connected with a local who assured me there would be bears about.

The Alaska Highway: Whitehorse, The Frantic Follies and the Yukon Wildlife Preserve

8.00 pm - broad daylight ...
9.00 pm - broad daylight .....
10.00 pm - broad daylight ......
11.00 pm - broad daylight .........
11.30 pm - broad daylight .............

Whatever made me think around the clock daylight would be a good thing. It sounds like so much fun. Spend all day sightseeing and then party on through the night. No sunset, no evening, no need to go to bed. Hang on, this is me talking. Anything less than eight hours sleep and I'm a total wreck. Round the clock daytime was never going to work for me.

Skagway, Alaska and the Klondike Highway

Skagway, Alaska was the northern most point for many of our fellow passengers on the Alaska Marine Highway. You can go further, all the way to Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands, but after Skagway the ferries become less frequent and the connections trickier.

David is not a fan of places where he is likely to meet hordes of fellow tourists; even less so when those tourists arrive by their thousands. Skagway has a permanent population of about 1,000 people but during the cruise ship season it can host 10,000 or more visitors in a single day.

Driving the Alaska Highway: Dawson Creek to Whitehorse.

The Alaska Highway runs from Dawson Creek in British Columbia to just south of Fairbanks, Alaska. It was built by the US army during WWII to connect the lower 48 States with Alaska in the face of the Japanese invasion of the Aleutian Islands in the far south-west of that state. Canada, through which much of the highway runs, agreed to the project on the basis that the US would pay for the road's construction and control it for the duration of the war. Once the war ended control of the Canadian section would be ceded to Canada.