Seven things you need to know before you visit Alaska.

Last year David and I drove to south-east Alaska. Yes, I know - there are very few roads and you can't actually drive there. We drove anyway. Most visitors see this part of the world from the deck of a cruise ship and if this is what you are planning, don't worry, we called in at the same towns and ports as the cruise ships so my advice applies equally to you.

Sitka, Alaska

Travel Photo Tuesday

Sitka was once the capital of the Imperial Russian Empire in Alaska. Now it is a sleepy little town with a population of less than 9,000 inhabitants. When Russia sold Alaska to the U.S in what turned out to be one of the best real estate deals in history the Russian population left, but enough of their history lives on to make this a fascinating place to visit. Yet another town which is unconnected by road to the mainland of Alaska, Sitka suffers less from cruise ship overload with the ships calling in less frequently than other south-eastern Alaskan ports.

Juneau, Alaska

Travel Photo Tuesday

You can fly to it or you can sail to it but Juneau, Alaska is the only mainland U.S. capital which you cannot drive to. Like much of south-east Alaska, Juneau is unconnected by road to the rest of North America. In keeping with my Travel Photo Tuesday theme this post will be long on photos and short on narrative. Click here to read more about our time in Juneau.

Alaska - Wrangell, Petersburg and the Wrangell Narrows

Travel Photo Tuesday

The Wrangell Narrows are a 22 mile stretch of water between Wrangell and Petersburg in south-east Alaska. Navigating the narrows has been likened to playing nautical ping pong with a twist of Russian Roulette. Each turn of the ship must be lined up precisely with one of 60 navigational lights and buoys and the history of the narrows is littered with stories of vessels which failed to make it through.

Most cruise ships are too large for the passage and must head out to deeper water, missing the most exciting part of our journey on the Alaska Marine Highway.

Ketchikan, Alaska

Travel Photo Tuesday

Ketchikan, the southeasternmost city in Alaska is likely to be the first Alaskan port you will call into if you take an Alaskan Cruise or, as we did, drive the Alaska Marine Highway. Like so much of south-eastern Alaska, Ketchikan is not accessible by road. It has a population of 9,000 but if you expect to find the 'real Alaska' here, whatever that is, you will be disappointed.

Ketchikan has embraced tourism in the way that Walt Disney embraced entertainment, with loads of razzle-dazzle. That is not to say you won't have a ball in Ketchikan as long as you know what you are in for and enjoy the show.  If you do visit Ketchikan, don't say you weren't warned. Oh, and remember to take a raincoat - we got lucky and had a beautiful sunny day but Ketchikan is known for its high rainfall (150" a year).

Alaskan Cruises - Do Australians pay more than Americans?

Open the travel section of any weekend newspaper in Australia and you might be forgiven for thinking that Alaska is the only travel destination on earth. Page after page, story after story, advertisement after advertisement - it is all about Alaskan tours and cruises.  I appreciate that travel is our 'national hobby' but it seems you can't call yourself a true Australian until you have been on a cruise to America's 49th state. After Americans and Canadians, Australians make up the largest tourism group by nationality in Alaska - quite an impressive statistic for a country with only 24 million people.

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.

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.