Iowa to Alaska with our A128

[jpetrey]

Originally Posted by thehamguy1

The trip home won't be a rethreading of the outbound leg. We plan to take a series of ferries down the Alaska coast, hopping on and off at various places. it'll be expensive but if you subtract the cost of gas that we'd use otherwise and add the fun factor, I think we'll be able to justify it. We're in Haines, AK, tonight and plans are now to take the 6:something p.m. Ferry to Juneau tomorrow. It gets to Juneau around 11 p.m. We have reservations--a rarity for us, but the late arrival hour made us do it--at the Spruce Meadows RV Park. Court and the owner, Linda, had such a happy chat on the phone (cell service! Yea!) that when she asked whether they have a Good Sam discount, Linda said no but she'd give us the Good Linda discount. We intend to see the Mendenhall glacier, just about 3 miles from the campground.
We'll get off the last ferry at Prince Rupert, BC, and take various highways either to Seattle or elsewhere depending on whether we can get to Seattle by a certain date. If we miss it, we'll wind southeastward through Canada and decide where to reenter the US as the spirit takes us. We'll want to sidestep the forest fires we've heard are burning aplenty in the western states.
The trip yesterday was rough but beautiful and today, on the leg from our campsite about 15 miles south of Destruction Bay, YT, to Haines, the road was better and the sightseeing even better. The Haines Highway is a good route to take.

You will enjoy the Mendenhall Glacier. We saw it while on a tour from our cruise ship stop. Along with a whale watching tour.

[thehamguy1]

Some shots from today's drive.




We planned to stop for lunch at a rest area but changed our minds when we saw the current occupant.



Kluane Lake. Big, blue, beautiful. We camped along the shore of it last night at Cottonwood RV Park. We'd really recommend it, especially if the territorial park a few miles north is closed as it was when we got to it. Cottonwood RV Park is at the water's edge and they're nice folks. They often have bears walking through on the way to feeding grounds but we didn't see them.



Ho hum. More fabulous mountains and valleys.



You do tend to run out of superlatives here. How do you folks who live in or near mountains keep from getting blasé about them?



A fish wheel just north of Haines. Those we'd seen before were sitting onshore or in museums. This one was working and was also pictured in our oldest guidebook, from 10 years back.

[gregory]

Oh, ho-hum more beautiful scenery!

Returning part way via a ferry? Now that's one round about way to come home. The ferry view will give you a different experience & perspective. Will you sleep in the aframe while aboard? Or "hopping on and off" is for camping as well as touring?

Info for others on the pictured fish wheel:
Fish wheel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Deb

[handbuilder]

Thanks Deb - I was about to google that! Lee & Court's adventure has been so fun to follow! Hope to read more from others!

Lee - I live in a picturesque area...the pines, mountains, lakes and rivers surround us - I never tire of the view! My DH enjoys heading to the Spokane and Columbia river daily to go fishing...our big trip is to hit Idaho and Montana to go gemming and visit the dinosaur trail...but its been so hot, I think it'll be better next month...gotta hit a few more dog shows in between! haha - no exciting camping adventure there...haha

[brianak]

During travel on the Alaska Marine Highway Ferry you are not allowed on the car deck. Even to get something out of you vehicle.

[thehamguy1]

Originally Posted by brianak

During travel on the Alaska Marine Highway Ferry you are not allowed on the car deck. Even to get something out of your vehicle.

Yeah, they've sure made that part clear. We'll pack a bit of food and water and some hardware (binocs, camera, etc.) and carry it on with us while we sit in one of the lounges. The first leg to Juneau tomorrow is 4.5 hours, evening into night, so we may just nap when it gets dark. The longest leg--coming up Tuesday--is overnight 10 hours from Juneau to Wrangell, and we've reserved a cabin for that one. We'll fill up a backpack with stuff for then. The most tiring leg is Ketchikan to Prince Rupert, 'cause we have to be at the ferry terminal at 3:15 A.M. for a 5:15 departure. In between each leg we'll drive off the ferry and stay in the destination town. Courty has a visit booked to the Anan Bear Observatory while we're in Wrangell, for example. Once we get off at P.R., it's back to driving.

[clong46]

Hi Court and Lee...Greg and I just spent an entire evening reading all the blog posts for a while in one shot. It was really fun to read that way and we enjoyed getting to be a vicarious part of this marvelous adventure. Cheryl & Greg

[thehamguy1]

The Alaska Maritime Highway System is a state-owned ferry system, providing water travel and freight-hauling services to the public. We took the ferry "Malaspina" from Haines to Juneau last evening and it was a great experience. We'd do it again in a heartbeat. Come to think of it, we will be doing it again, as we have three more ferry trips ticketed on our way to Prince Rupert, BC.
Getting the truck/trailer set on the ferry was easy. We showed up at the ferry terminal in Haines the required 2-hours early. Courty took our itinerary number to the ticket window while I waited in the truck. They assigned us a lane to wait in, I assume based on the length of our unit (ours measures 36' 3", which we had to round up to 37'). The only other vehicle in that lane was also a pickup and trailer combo.
A National Guard convoy was waiting for the same ferry and I wondered briefly if we'd be bumped to make room for it due to our classification as a "long" vehicle. But we were ushered aboard right after the convoy and ended up parked behind the lead vehicle. It was easy to maneuver inside the ship, even with the trailer attached. After staying in the truck until we'd been moved up to goose the vehicle ahead, we grabbed our stuff and went to find a good place to sit. We took seats in the forward lounge, which offered a view of more than 200 degrees centered on the bow. The scenery was the by-now-usual stupendous.
There's a cafeteria aboard. People seemed to enjoy their meals. We had brought our own meal and took advantage of an empty table in the cafeteria. No one seemed to mind. We also noted that no one seemed to mind if you violated any of the posted rules (no sleeping here, no saving seats, no luggage here, etc.). You'd think the result would be chaos but in fact the voyage down part of the Inside Passage went super smoothly.
It had just turned completely dark as we entered Auke Bay, the harbor for the ferry system. As you would expect, views of the harbor lights were as delightful as were those of the mountains and islands along the way.
We were the second vehicle off the ferry, and the 3.8 miles from the terminal to Spruce Meadows Campground went by with a zing. Before we knew it we were parked and set up, and were in bed by or before 11:30.
Today we went to see Mendenhall Glacier. The visitors center and the grounds surrounding it are delightful, a must-see if you come here. We'll probably go back tomorrow and walk some of the trails there. We took lots of pictures of the glacier and Lake Mendenhall, which didn't exist until after about 1930, when the glacier retreated enough that its meltwater filled the depression at its foot to form the lake. Pieces of calved-off glacier are floating around, making for good photo ops.
Tomorrow we'll move to the NFS campground there, Lake Mendenhall Campground. We drove through the camping area on our way back from the glacier and realized that if we had it to do over we'd have gone directly there from the ferry. It's a beautiful campground with graveled, treed sites, many of which are on the lake, and it's only about 2 miles farther than where we're staying now. If we'd only known! Dry camping will cost us $5 a night because of my Golden Age Pass, or as I like to call it, the Old Fart's Discount. They have showers as well as actual bathrooms. For RVers there's a section of the park that includes hookups for from $21 to $28 a night depending on how many services you need. The only thing missing is Wi-fi, but hey! Can't have everything.



Beautiful downtown Haines



The route out



The Mal easing up to the dock



I'm a sucker for lighthouses



Volcano? Probably.

[thehamguy1]

for being a ship that's getting along in years (Google "M/V Malaspina"), The Mal is a pretty tight ship



The Forward Lounge.



Your heart hurts just looking.



Mendenhall Glacier



Lake Mendenhall

[thehamguy1]

For more on Mendenhall Glacier, including some live cams, go to www.mendenhallglacier.net.

[gregory]

I thought the light house and "volcano" photos were wonderful and then the "twilight" shot...wow!

Huh, one does run out of descriptive wording...

Deb

[thehamguy1]

Hello from Wrangell Island, Alaska. I'm trying to stay warm here in the public library while Courty's off watching bears eat salmon. She took the AnAn bear tour this morning. Me, I've seen bears.
We're camped for free in a USFS campground about 14 miles out of town on the only highway on the island. It--the campground--has a Tlingit name I can neither say nor spell. It's perched partway up one of the forested hills above Point Nemo, overlooking the Inside Passage. We're the only ones in the place. As I lay looking out the bubble window last night, a shooting star went past, completing the feeling of being in a magic place.
This entire coast of Alaska is part of the Tongass National Forest, which is a temperate rain forest (!) that stretches over 400 miles along the panhandle of Alaska. As you would expect, rain and fog predominate here, thus no need to ask what the weather is like today.
A couple of observations about Alaska that I don't think I've noted before; forgive me if I'm repeating myself:
1. Alaskans love espresso. That alone is enough to endear them to me. Any place big enough to have a parking space will often have an espresso kiosk. Not only that, they'll be happy to make me a decaf soy mocha without even a hint of a grimace. More sophisticated coffee peddlers have been known to act a bit snooty when I've asked for that. Not here. Yay, Alaskans!
2. Ditto for bakeries. In fact, Wrangell is the first town I can recall that doesn't have a bakery. Back in my home state, bakeries have become an endangered retail species but not here. Several places we've stopped have even combined my two favorite words in the English language in their shop titles: Espresso Bakery. Definitely not on my self-imposed super-strict diet (which I'm going to have to get back on one of these days), but golly, I'm on vacation!
3. Alaskans are not wimps when it comes to being outside in what only they could call summer weather. Case in point: this morning it's probably less than 50 degrees F. out. I'm wearing a lined fall jacket, earmuffs and gloves. And shivering. And sniffling. A fellow steps out from a place across the street in a tee shirt and proceeds to work outside awhile. On the Macho/Wimp continuum I know where I stand.

We're mentally ready to go home now and are thinking of routes back that will cut a day or two off the trip. We may cut out one of the ferry stops--Ketchikan--and go directly to Prince Rupert, BC, from here tomorrow. The only problem is that we'd arrive in P.R. at around 1 A.M., have to go through Customs, then have to find a place to spend the rest of the night at a time when most sensible people are asleep. We haven't decided. The schedule we actually have tickets for puts us in Ketchikan for about a day and a half, then has us arriving at the ferry terminal at 3:00 A.M. to catch the P.R. ferry. That's not a great alternative either, but at least it gets us there in daylight.

Now to some pics.



Our room aboard the ferry Taku. See also the last photo which somehow slipped to the bottom



Passing through the Wrangell Narrows. The channel in places is only slightly wider than the ferry. Picturesque, though.



Last night's campsite in the unpronounceable USFS campground. Tonight's too.



The view out our window. A ferry went by last evening, so that must be our route out down there.

[thehamguy1]

A few more photos of our campsite. Although the originals of all our photos are quite sharp the uploading process sacrifices some of the clarity. Not complaining, just explaining. Our photo total is now well over 2000 pictures, not counting videos, so we've got a problem coming up when we get home, trying to sort and figure out what to do with them all. And to think I spent 5 weeks in Egypt once and came home with only a roll and a half of pictures! Obviously Courty's the photog in the fambly.

[2lvrvn]

After you get home, get the photos in order and are ready to give your dissertation on your trip to Alaska :-). Can I have a front row seat if I bring the popcorn? ( and the espresso of course!)

[2lvrvn]

PS: I will be the first to buy the book, too!

[Jeep4Two]

Once again I post another 'like' post. An amazing trip and I have loved 'watching' every minute of it.

Thanks so much for sharing your journey.

[RDMeier]

Originally Posted by Jeep4Two

Once again I post another 'like' post. An amazing trip and I have loved 'watching' every minute of it.

Thanks so much for sharing your journey.

X2:-)

[jpetrey]

X3 :-)

[FarFromStock]

Ditto! Reading your posts has been quite enjoyable! THANK YOU for sharing!!!

[thehamguy1]

Bears! Courtenay's note.
The misty morning started with a jet boat ride of about an hour and a half for 11 of us. The clouds hung so low you could almost reach up and touch them. This place feels almost mystical as you move in and out of clouds drifting in the tree tops and hugging the hillsides. They are constantly rearranging themselves, opening and closing vistas. As we emerged from a fog bank, we found ourselves at the mouth of a small river delta. The tide was low and the captain ran our boat up on the sand. Huge old pines dripping with moss and covered in lichen towered over us. An acrid smell permeated the area--the smell of rotting fish. Salmon die after they spawn, creating a feast for dozens of eagles and hundreds of gulls and a myriad of unseen organisms. But we were focused on bears, not birds. The AnAn Bear Observatory is run by the forest service. A half-mile boardwalk leads to a deck overlooking a waterfall. Salmon are thick. So are bears. Only 60 people a day are allowed up the path. You must get a permit and pay the forest service a $20 fee (guides and boat ride cost much more). You're not allowed to bring any food or anything that might smell like food (cherry lip balm, for example). After instructions from a forest service ranger and a short wait for the--sorry had to stop for a breaching whale, typing this on the ferry. You've got to love this! Anyway, after a short wait for some of the bears to clear the path--this is their home, their path and they call the shots--we made our way up the slippery boardwalk, clapping and singing as we went. The observation deck and photo blind look out over waterfalls where the sows and cubs generally gather. The males hang out at another falls farther up. Bears go right under the deck and pass back and forth in front of the only outhouse. How can I describe how completely fascinating it was to watch these bears hanging out, fishing and, as you can see, napping in a nearby tree. She went up that tree in seconds, so don't even think of climbing a tree to avoid a bear! The salmon were thick and the bears had been feeding for weeks so they were pretty portly. Some went after fish aggressively. One we dubbed the lazy bear went in for stealing or eating already dead salmon. These were black bears, some with cubs. A smaller bear fished from a hole in the rocks, deftly catching fish after fish, dragging them quickly into her hiding place to avoid the much larger lazy bear. Another big sow perched just below us behind a rock for easy fishing as salmon were swept back down the river into this little backwater. Down the river a ways a mother grizzly and her three cubs fished and played. Grizzlies fish by putting their whole bodies in the water, even looking underwater. Black bears usually reach a paw in or grab a fish in their jaws, the guides told us. Black bears will clear out if a grizzly comes close, but mama and the cubs kept their distance. After 3 1/2 hours give or take, we were pretty cold and we made our way back down the trail. We had another wait while a couple of bears kept our captain away from the boat, so we watched dozens of eagles perched in the trees and listened to their loud chatter. They'll leave as soon as the salmon spawn ends. It was an extraordinary day.
Note: I went on this whole trip pretty scared of bears, especially grizzlies. At first I was worried every time I stepped out of the camper. I still have a healthy respect for all bears, but after numerous instructions from park personnel and a greater comfort level with bear spray, I'm more confident. We keep a scrupulously clean camp and err on the side of caution, always asking for information, but we hike and camp with more comfort than we did at first. We know not to run, ever. Prey runs. We don't carry food, only water, on hikes. We're always bear aware and still nervous, but not terrified.

Can't upload photos at Ketchikan McD's. Will give you plenty of bears later!