July-August, 1993
Upon reflection, if there was one ongoing source of travel inspiration for me, especially in my younger days, it was the New York Times Travel Section. I read an article about the Alaska State Ferry System and how it connected Alaska with the lower 48 at very low cost (it was subsidized) so that Alaskans did NOT have to drive through a foreign country in order to travel to another part of the USA. The bonus, of course, was that the ferry plied the exact same route along the Inside Passage as the cruise ships. The same scenery at a fraction of the cost!
In pre-internet days it was very difficult to book seats and the boats filled up quickly for the summer travel season. It was justifiably popular. Brian agreed it was a good idea, he got the time off work, and I booked us a stateroom. We were going to Alaska. (as a side note: Brian's law firm of White & Case was so stodgy that one of the partners said "oh, you are traveling on one of your weird vacations again I hear" to which Brian replied, "yes, I am going to another state and Canada". We laughed about that the entire trip - Alaska and Canada "ooooh so edgy".)
We were flying into Vancouver and spending time with Brian and his sister in the Rockies [see: Rockies] before heading to Prince Rupert by train and picking up the ferry. Even though it was the Alaska State Ferry system, it made stops in Vancouver, Port Hardy, and Prince Rupert in British Columbia, too.
KETCHIKAN
Memory fails but I think we didn't overnight in Prince Rupert and just had a longish wait for the ferry. There were a few other people we met on the train catching the boat as well. It was my SECOND trip to Prince Rupert in a year and I have no memory of the place (no photos - it must have been exceedingly unremarkable). The next stop was Alaska so we went through Canadian border control. One of our traveling mates got an exit stamp from Canada. We were all envious because in those days of proudly collecting and showing off passport stamps to other travelers, Americans NEVER had Canadian stamps.
We got on the boat and headed north. I believe the journey must have mostly been at night because we arrived in Ketchikan in the morning and I have no photos of that part of the journey.
Ketchikan did not have much of anything. We (Brian and I and a few others we met) had only two goals in Ketchikan - buy food for the voyage and get on a local boat tour up through Misty Fjords National Monument. Ketchikan itself had virtually nothing - it was a small fishing village with a few totem poles. I am not sure if even the big cruise ships stopped back in those days.
MISTY FJORDS NATIONAL MONUMENT
"It was all 'Misty Fjords'" was a Brian truism that came out of the trip along the Alaskan Coast. From Ketchikan we caught a boat tour with some other ferry passengers to the mysteriously named, Misty Fjords National Monument. The scenery was gorgeous without a doubt, but what we saw was a lot of rugged coastline and probably due to time constraints, we never really got very deep into the park. The idea of passing through some narrow mountain slot on a boat with mists swirling around the peaks was soon dashed. Mostly we were in a large inlet with pine forested mountains on both sides. I am sure with a smaller boat or a kayak and heaps of time, the place would not disappoint, but for us it was just not what we expected at all.
Nevertheless it was a great few hours on the boat along a beautiful coastline. No high, snow-capped peaks, just endless forests. We wondered when the legendary stunning scenery would begin.
Misty Fjords National Monument
ON THE INSIDE PASSAGE
We left Ketchikan at night and woke up the next day to the full glory of the Inside Passage. It was not oversold. Steely blue water, snow-capped peaks, verdant forests, and the occasional orca, it was everything we thought it would be. The lovely scenery just went on and on and on. We occasionally stopped at tiny towns on islands or the mainland - the ferry was a lifeline for those small communities not connected to the rest of North America by road.
A national park ranger was with us on the boat, and he gave lectures and was available for questions. That was a great use of US tax dollars - I was impressed. The trip was glorious until it became tedious. Even gorgeous scenery gets dull after some time. That was the moment that we realized a real cruise ship probably was the ideal way to go for this section of the trip. If a passenger got bored, one of those floating mall/hotels had a myriad of other activities. The Alaska State Ferries had a lot of seating - that was it. We should have brought more wine and less snacks. Our worry about "food on board" (described as very basic) had us more focused on food than passing time. We certainly were not going to starve for the entire passage.
Another Alaska State Ferry
On the boat - a lot of sitting
Petersburg, AK - very brief stop
SITKA, AK
Reaching Sitka was one of the high points of the journey. Due to the narrow passages between the islands and strong tidal currents, the ferry could only travel to and from Sitka at specific times. The ship was huge, so it seemed unbelievable that the tidal force could be so strong that a ship had wait for the proper time to make the passage. The route turned out to be dramatic with the channel shrinking down to nothing more than a canal in places. The sea route to Sitka was so confined, I could see why a ship would not want to deal with strong currents lest the ship be pushed into the steep hills on either side. We all were on deck to experience that unique experience of the Inside Passage.
Since we were bound to the tides, we had an enforced longer stop in Sitka. The islanders knew it too - even the big cruise ships had to obey the same tidal schedule. We were stuck in Sitka for awhile. The city's location on Baranof Island was dramatic, surrounded by water and mountains. There were shops and places to eat for the "captive crowd" from the ferry. We wandered the small town and had some decent food. St Michael's cathedral was an obligatory stop - the oldest Orthodox Cathedral in the Americas. The building dated from 1962 as the original from the mid 19th century had unfortunately burnt down. Sitka made for a pleasant stop, but after walking around, a little food shopping, and a meal, we will had a LOT of time left. I mentally noted Sitka had a lot of vehicles considering it was on a island with few roads.
There was no choice but to wait for the tide.
St Michael's Cathedral, Sitka, AK
JUNEAU, AK
Juneau, Alaska - I had never even thought about that city and it didn't figure very highly on our itinerary. Port Hardy, Ketchikan, and Sitka had all been almost non-cities. They appeared more like collections of buildings along the water. Juneau, however, was a state capital and was a proper city - except Juneau didn't look like any "city" in the lower 48. In fact, at the time we visited, Juneau looked like a town right out of the Wild West of the USA. We expected cowboys on horseback to come riding down the street. This was Alaska?
The other thing was that Juneau was a huge cruise ship stopover. The feel of parts of town was more like a Caribbean port rather than a "northern town". There were all kinds of restaurants and shops lining the waterfront - Brian and I were impressed. The mountain scenery, the sea, the summer vibe - Juneau was a great place to be. Unexpected surprises like Juneau make travel all the more worthwhile. We talked to some shop owners who opened up for the summer season in Juneau and spend the cold months traveling and buying things to sell the following season (very little in Juneau's souvenir shops was from Alaska, ironically). I had to admit, the lifestyle seemed momentarily appealing.
downtown
a glacier
A day trip (tour) out of Juneau was the Mendenhall Glacier. We were impressed because to date it was the largest glacier we had ever seen. We did see the famous glacier blue in the cracks of the ice flow, but overall it looked like dirty snow. In the past, people often walked on the glacier, but those days were long gone - with the rapid melting it was far too dangerous. We were about to take a small cruise into Glacier Bay (and it was rather expensive). I hoped it would be better or we had just paid a lot of money for nothing.
Mendenhall Glacier
Glacier Bay National Park
We really dropped the bomb on our excursion to Glacier Bay National Park. This was before we had a lot of expendable income, so the expenditure was both a huge investment and a big gamble. We had booked ourselves a very small cruise ship, but given our limited time and the difficult access to the park, there were few options. It turned out to be a good judgement call and a great use of our then limited funds.
Glacier Bay is only accessible by sea and the big cruise liners can sail right up into it - kind of. Those behemoth ships couldn't get very close to the actual glaciers and passengers had to pay to take "excursions" to get up close to those stunning blue-white walls of ice. Our smaller ship could get right up next to them (sometimes scarily close). It was worth every cent. Glacier Bay was one of the most stunning locations I have ever visited - anywhere.
As we pulled into the bay we saw the pier for the national park headquarters. There was a fully equipped campground and kayaking was the main activity. A healthy population of brown bears lived in and around Glacier Bay, so Brian and I agreed it was not a place we were going to camp or hike any time soon. In fact, Brian's sister ended up camping there a couple years later and a brown bear walked into their camp!
We continued up the bay and the scenery got more stunning. The weather was perfect and we learned from the crew that days like that were few and far between. You know you are in the right place at the right time when the crew are all on deck excitedly taking photos, too! We approached several glaciers and excitedly waited when we heard the thunder of the cracking ice deep inside them ("sum dum" in one of the local languages"). Then the whole boat watched as they calved huge icebergs into the bay (terrifying) revealing their otherworldly blue-colored cores momentarily. Huge waves disturbingly rocked the boat afterward. The snow-capped mountains soared all around us - they were not the highest mountains in the world, but we were viewing their peaks from sea level which made them appear even higher than the Rockies and the Himalayas. Most mountains are viewed from an already high elevation. From the boat they looked massive.
The air was clean and crisp and the scenery unparalleled. We were in heaven. What is Glacier Bay like? I told friends afterward, "Imagine being on earth the day after God finished creating the world".
Glacier Bay National Park remains in my top places visited anywhere, ever.
Yeah...it was actually pretty awesome. The weather was so good, even the CREW were taking photos!
Glacier Bay -- people ask me in all my travels where are my favorites?? Glacier Bay on a sunny day for SURE!
Tracey Arm
After the glorious visit to Glacier Bay, we had still not finished exploring the Juneau area. A long fjord was located nearby, Tracey Arm, and the same small cruise company that took us to Glacier Bay also had an overnight to Tracey Arm. We returned from Glacier Bay to Juneau where some passengers got off the boat and others boarded just to see Tracey Arm. We left in the afternoon and arrived in Tracey Arm late. Since it was summer, we had no worry - we were in the Land of the Midnight Sun.
Tracey Arm was mildly beautiful after Glacier Bay. Had it been the only place we saw near Juneau, we would have been astounded. There were tall mountains, waterfalls, and a glacier at the end of the steep-walled fjord. As we came to the top of the long inlet and the light was finally fading, the temperatures dropped dramatically. Winds swept down off the ice and it was uncomfortable to stand outside. It was as if we had sailed out of summer and into winter. The glacier loomed darkly at the end of the fjord. It was freezing cold. We just wanted to leave. Why had we arrived so late in the fading light in a deep valley? It was not only disappointing after Glacier Bay, it was poorly planned. We had paid good money to be brought somewhere too late even to enjoy it.
We sailed back into the setting sun and warmed up. I felt sorry for those who had just joined us in Juneau. Tracey Arm was amazing, but it was not Glacier Bay - no place ever would be.
THE ROAD NORTH
Haines Alaska was another ferry ride away from Juneau, almost the end of the Alaska Marine Highway. We took the boat up the Chilkoot Inlet and had our last view of the glorious mountain scenery around Juneau. Haines was a little bit of a place and we nervously bought our ticket for the bus to Haines Junction, Yukon. We were remote, there were few buildings and people, and we found it hard to believe there would be any scheduled bus service there. We waited nervously feeling abandoned on the edge of the known world.
Our bus turned up, however, and our garrulous driver explained that the windows were made of special glass (polarized) just for sightseeing. Impressive! We left Haines and its buildings in under a minute and were soon on a straight road headed north. The bus was actually headed for Fairbanks, but we were getting off in Canada and catching a connecting bus to Whitehorse. We passed through tiny towns and people got on and off the bus regularly. They all knew the driver (of course). We entered Canada without any border check (we were shocked). I think in that part of the world the residents view themselves as living in their own country - neither USA nor Canada, just the Great North.
After all the ocean scenery, it was nice to be on land again. The emptiness was astounding. We wouldn't experience that again until we visited Western Australia years later. There was just so much vacant land. "Expanse" is the only word that describes it. Beautiful and also overwhelming - I wondered what the first European explorers felt after leaving the crowded Old Country and coming to such a place?
YUKON
changing buses
If we thought arriving in Haines and catching the bus north was unnerving, changing buses at Haines Junction, Yukon was simply a leap of faith. Just before we reached that T-junction bus stop with all of one gas station and restaurant (very similar to the Australian outback), we had skirted the beautiful Kluane National Park. The mountains in the distance were gorgeous. I had never even heard of the park - it was absolutely massive. Part of a protected area complex that included chunks of Alaska, British Columbia, and Yukon, the contiguous park area was on an unimaginable scale. Even more unbelievable, one part of the region (in Alaska) was somehow not included - what was there in that huge wilderness to keep it out of the protected area? Yakutat, Alaska - famous for sport fishing. Why had that chunk of empty land (most likely government-owned) not been rolled into the massive international park conglomeration?
After appreciating our great polarized-glass bus windows for viewing Kluane Park from a distance, we arrived at the bus stop. We nervously got off and the driver assured us the connecting bus would pick us up. We had arrived at the famous Alaska Highway. We sat and waited and not long after, the Canadian bus came up the highway and did a turnaround at Haines Junction.
We were headed to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.
Kluane National Park, YT
Whitehorse, YT
We arrived in Whitehorse and settled into our hotel (totally non-memorable). Whitehorse was another "wild-west town" that had something of a edge to it. We hung out at a local bar and heard the locals describe the winter and how they dealt with it (or just escaped it). The winter was so extreme it took planning and preparation (mentally). Apparently, it literally drove people mad. The tourist attraction in town was the old sternwheeler the SS Klondike II:
Klondike II carried freight until the early 1950s. Due to the construction of a highway connecting Dawson City and Whitehorse, many Yukon River sternwheelers were decommissioned. In an attempt to save Klondike II, she was converted into a cruise ship by White Pass and Yukon Route. The Duke of Edinburgh (consort of Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada) was invited to tour the ship in 1954, being taken on a short trip down the Yukon River and back to Whitehorse during his day-long visit to the city.
(Wikipedia)
The strongest memory of Whitehorse was that the sun was high in the sky at 10pm. That was impressive and also really messed with my circadian rhythm. I had a difficult time going to sleep - it was almost like jetlag. I could see how full-year residents might indeed go mad living in either nearly continuous daylight or darkness. I wasn't so sure I'd like the daylight portion of the extreme days in that part of the world any more than I'd like endless nights of winter.
We visited the Miles Canyon Suspension Bridge, a locally famous old bridge over a small canyon carved by the Yukon River. With that, we realized there wasn't all that much to see and do in Whitehorse. We continued south on the Alaska Highway to Carcross.
SS Klondike Museum
Suspension Bridge, Miles Canyon.
Carcross, YT (pop. <200 in 1993)
Carcross, originally known as Caribou Crossing, is an unincorporated community in Yukon, Canada, on Bennett Lake and Nares Lake. It is home to the Carcross/Tagish First Nation.
It is 74 km (46 mi) south-southeast by the Alaska Highway and the Klondike Highway from Whitehorse. The south end of the Tagish Road is in Carcross. Carcross is also on the White Pass and Yukon Route railway.
...
Originally known as Naataase Heen (Tagish for ‘water running through the narrows’), Caribou Crossing was named after the migration of huge numbers of caribou across the natural land bridge between Lake Bennett and Nares Lake. That caribou herd was decimated during the Klondike Gold Rush, but a recovery program raised the number of animals to about 450.
...
Caribou Crossing was also a station for the Royal Mail and the Dominion Telegraph Line, and it served as a communications point on the Yukon River.
If we thought Whitehorse would have been a challenge to live in during the "long dark", Carcross was even smaller. We felt happy to be boarding the WP&YR train to ride back down to Skagway, AK on the coast. Carcross was totally tourism dependent and we were told it just closed up during the winter months. The cruise ships disgorged their money-laden passengers in Skagway to board the train through the mountains to Carcross where they would spend a few hours (and hopefully some money) before returning to their floating five-star hotels. Carcross only lived for the waves of tourists that came on the train. We were exceptions to the rule arriving by Alaska Highway and exiting the town for the coast. Due to this kind of existence, Carcross literally had nothing except for tourist shops (and some pleasant scenery).
White Pass & Yukon Route Railway
Along with the Inside Passage of Alaska and Canada, another highlight of the trip was to be the WP&YR train ride. Formerly, this narrow gauge railway was built during the Klondike Gold Rush to ferry passengers and goods up through the mountains to Carcross and Whitehorse. After the gold rush, the railway still supported passengers and freight until the road was built from Skagway to the Alaska highway in Carcross. After that, the train became redundant and was almost done away with until its tourism potential was recognized. Today it is ironically owned by the parent company of Carnival Cruise lines. It is an authentic narrow gauge railway ride that climbs steeply from sea level up through the coastal range to Carcross. The line to Whitehorse is no longer in use (mostly because it just adds too much more time for day-trippers).
The journey by car is about 1.5 hours, but by the old train line it is a whopping FIVE hours. Now those five hours are pretty glorious, creeping (and I mean CREEPING) along the notches cut in the mountains and through several tunnels. We bought our tickets in Carcross and found ourselves on a train returning to Skagway filled with cruise ship passengers. It was .... less than ideal. Mainly, the vintage carriages were never made for sightseeing so the windows were small and the good views were all on one side of the train. The carriages were packed, the seats were hard and wooden (original), and there were tiny, dirty windows (most of them opened) effectively acting like portholes onto the magnificent scenery that everyone was vying to catch a glimpse of. Needless to say, the train adventure soon became an experience to be tolerated rather than savored. People in Carcross had even told us we were better off taking the bus for equally good scenery and a shorter ride. As usual, the locals were right. We were happy to have had the experience, but it definitely was a low-light of the trip.
Once again without a passport check, we entered the USA.
White Horse Pass & Yukon RR
SKAGWAY, AK
Our final stop of the trip ended up being in a city that felt the most "real" of all the places we visited in spite of its rather unfortunate sounding name:
The name Skagway (historically also spelled Skaguay) is derived from sha-ka-ԍéi, a Tlingit idiom which figuratively refers to rough seas in the Taiya Inlet, which are caused by strong north winds.
(Wikipedia)
We had one overnight in Skagway before heading back to Juneau by ferry and catching our flight to Vancouver and then back to JFK. Skagway was another little frontier town that looked like something from a John Wayne movie (he had actually filled something in Skagway once). However, Skagway also felt like it had more going for it than just mass tourism. People lived there year round and it was the first city we came across that did not feel 100% touristic or "seasonal". I surprisingly liked the place and its setting at the top of the Taiya Inlet with the sea to the front and the towering mountains behind was dramatic. Unfortunately, by the time we reached Skagway we were tired of the Great White North and were ready to return to a place where at least darkness came by 9pm.
Literally the end of the line.
CODA
Overall the trip was remembered as a great success - partially because we did something normally only reserved for cruise ship passengers (but at a fraction of the cost and with a lot more flexibility). We also saw a part of the USA and Canada that was completely foreign to us. In that way, it very nearly was like a trip abroad. The enduring memory, however, was that we had the great luck to visit Glacier Bay in glorious weather which apparently was extremely rare. That made the entire trip, no matter what happened before or after. We didn't approach any similar scenery again until we met its antipodean cousin in southern South America. The extreme south of Chile and Argentina are the spiritual twins of that part of Alaska and Yukon.
The best part of the vacation was that most of it was right in the USA. I think neither of us thought there could be any domestic travel that could impress us. We were so wrong. I am so glad we went.
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