My Favourite Port of the Alaskan Panhandle

We spent the morning at sea, making a calm southbound approach through the Revillagigedo Channel toward Ketchikan. After the birthday festivities last night, a quiet morning spent watching the misty islands slide past from the upper deck was just what was needed.

We tied up in Ketchikan right on schedule at 1:30 in the afternoon. Sitting just fifty miles from the British Columbia border, it remains one of my most favourite port stops along the entire coast, even though we have never actually booked a formal excursion here. The place simply feels like it could be a home. Sometimes one travels to a location that extends an aura of a personal fit, and Ketchikan does that for me. We spent the afternoon strolling along Creek Street, walking the elevated wooden boardwalks built on pilings directly over the rushing water, taking in the steep hillside backdrop and the timber-town charm.

We headed back to the Solstice well before our 8:00 evening departure. As the ship pulled away from the berth and turned south into the Inside Passage, it marked the end of our final Alaskan port call for the trip, leaving only the long sea day back to Vancouver ahead of us.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Waking up early on my birthday was made easy by the scenery outside. The Solstice spent the morning from 5:30 to 10:00 navigating the narrow waters of Endicott Arm, slowly working its way toward the face of Dawes Glacier. And we were up! As one of the main marine outlets of the Stikine Icefield, Dawes has undergone a rapid retreat, pulling back nearly 4 kilometers since 1985 at an average pace of over 100 meters a year, while thinning fast enough to fragment its terminal face. Witnessing such a grand show of changing nature on the anniversary of my birth felt like a genuine privilege. Standing at the rail as the ship turned in front of the ice face beat any standard birthday routine.

We cleared the fjord by late morning and made the run down to Juneau, docking right on schedule at 1:30 in the afternoon. Rain settled in for most of our stay, keeping the town thoroughly damp throughout the afternoon. Since Juneau is a familiar stop for us, there was no urge to force organized excursions. We discovered that the gondola up Mount Roberts, which we first took to overlook the city twenty-five years ago, was closed due to an accident earlier this spring. Instead, we spent a few unhurried hours exploring the streets on foot under our umbrellas, taking in the usual mix of state capital bustle and waterfront traffic.

We headed back aboard well before our 8:30 evening departure and had dinner in the formal restaurant, where the waiters, as expected, came over to sing Happy Birthday. However, we were in for a major surprise when we returned to the room that evening. They had decorated the place with wild abandon and set a complimentary bottle of white wine right in the middle of all the decorations. Spending a birthday surrounded by cold water, glacial ice, and birthday extravagance made for a memorable entry in the log.

Skagway or Bust! (Again)

We tied up in Skagway early this morning, docked and secured right at 7:00. Having a full thirteen hours in port until 8:00 in the evening meant there was no need to rush off the ship, which always makes for a far better day ashore.

Skagway sits at the northern tip of the Lynn Canal, famously serving as the primary springboard for the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush. This was our sixth time in town, as it features on almost every Alaska itinerary. Our return here in July 2024 proved memorable for all the wrong reasons when the train up the pass could not bring us, my sister, and her friend back to the ship, and a major landslide blocked the return bus, turning my birthday into a full logistical exercise.

Today was vastly simpler. We revisited streets we already know intimately, keeping the pace deliberate, and popped into the local public library to catch up on a bit of internet.

With the Solstice staying docked until 20:00, we had the luxury of heading back on board for lunch, relaxing during the afternoon, and taking another stroll through town before dinner. Leaving the pier as dusk began to settle over the fjord made for a fine end to a calm, comfortable day.

Our First Views of Hoonah, AK

The morning was spent at sea, cruising through the northern channels as we made our approach toward Chichagof Island. Ocean mornings on a ship this size have a comfortable rhythm, leaving plenty of time to sit by a window with a coffee and watch the coastal landscape gradually narrow.

We docked at the Wilderness Dock near Hoonah right on schedule at 1:30 in the afternoon. From there, we walked the coastal trail over to the old cannery to stretch our legs along the shore, holding off on the free gondola until our return later in the day. Originally built in 1912 by the Hoonah Packing Company, the facility processed salmon for four decades before shuttering in 1953, famously housing much of the local population after a disastrous fire leveled the town in 1944. The Huna Totem Corporation has done a splendid job restoring the site, keeping the original 1930s butchering machinery, steam retorts, and mechanized canning lines intact inside the museum buildings.

Hoonah itself was one of the main reasons we jumped at this itinerary in the first place, as neither of us had ever been to the town. We bought a ride on an old converted school bus into the city proper to see what the actual community looks like beyond the restored cannery precinct. It was a great way to get a grounded sense of the area.

The Solstice remained tied up late into the evening, finally pushing off from the pier around 10:00. Watching the wilderness slide past under the lingering northern dusk made for a quiet, satisfying conclusion to our first official Alaskan port call.

Upcoming: Another Birthday in Alaska

A past exploration of Glacier Bay National Park.

Sometimes we plan our travels years in advance; other times we simply wake up and realize a birthday requires a change of scenery. This morning, Jay and I rather spontaneously decided to book passage on another Alaskan cruise to help celebrate my birthday later this month.

We are no strangers to the BC and Alaskan coastline. We have already sailed these specific waters five times stretching all the way back to 2001. Our very first cruise of any kind was a seven-night Alaskan run on the Regal Princess twenty-five years ago this May. We also sailed in September 2022 aboard the ms Zuiderdam, specifically to celebrate Jay's birthday as the autumn chill started to set in.

Despite those seasonal outliers, our recent history reveals a clear and undeniable pattern. We heavily favor the month of July for these coastal retreats, having completed exactly three separate summer voyages up the passage. My 60th birthday in July 2019 was celebrated aboard the ms Nieuw Amsterdam. We returned to the same waters in July 2023 on the ms Volendam, hauling our friends, Ed, Shinji, Tim, and Jiwan along for the ride. Most recently, we spent July 2024 navigating the fjords on the ms Koningsdam with my sister Laurie and her friend, Michelle. I've now come to expect birthdays in Alaska.

July in Alaska simply works for us; the weather is tolerable and the glaciers remain reliably frozen. Beyond the agreeable climate, the rugged geography essentially forces our hand. There are simply no roads connecting many coastal towns. Even Juneau, the state capital, is completely cut off from the continental highway network. When we sit down to calculate the costs, simply walking onto a ship right here in Vancouver ends up being significantly cheaper than flying almost anywhere else for a week of hotel and restaurant bills.

Ketchikan, Alaska is, perhaps, my favourite, port town.

To pull off a booking on this spontaneous voyage, I contacted Arlene; she is our eighty-year-old cruise specialist operating out of the Expedia Cruises agency right here in New Westminster. Given the extremely busy summer season and our notoriously last-minute request, I honestly did not think she would find any available space. Against all odds, she managed to secure a single remaining cabin on the newly renovated Celebrity Solstice. We have absolutely zero experience with this particular cruise line, which means we are looking forward to a completely fresh dynamic on board.

Looking at the sheer volume of our previous coastal sailings, one might assume we have memorized every pine tree between Vancouver and Juneau. Yet the appeal of the Inside Passage remains stubbornly intact. We keep going back because the logistics are effortless, the scenery is consistently grand, and it provides a perfectly structured environment to simply sit back, eat well, and watch the ice float by without managing a complicated daily itinerary.

A helicopter ride to explore a glacier from Skagway, Alaska.

Big British Columbia

I was chatting in MS Teams with a friend who recently got back from an Alaskan cruise.  I was asking about Prince Rupert, BC as it is a relatively new stop for Holland America Line cruises.   I took the above photo the last and only time we were in town.

 

Jay and I visited by taking a 'BC Ferries/road trip'.  We started by taking a ferry over to Vancouver Island.  Then, we headed to the northern most tip of Port Hardy to catch an Inside Passage ferry.  After a night in a hotel, we drove onboard.  As it included an overnight journey, we bought a sleeping cabin onboard the ship for night two.

Eventually, we disembarked in Prince Rupert.  We looked around before heading back by road.  The way back home by road is around 920 miles.  However, we did a few stops when checking out Kitimat and driving a bit on the Glacier Highway to Stewart, BC.   

That little town is next to the Alaskan Panhandle.  We drove into Alaska.  We knew when passing a closed border station as the road turned to dirt.  We stayed only a half hour and by the time we got back to the border, a Canadian lady officer was there.  She was cheerful and most interested because we had a pet hamster with us.  I don't think we were allowed to pass through without papers for it, but we did manage to keep the animal, lovingly referred to as H2 for hamster #2.

We eventually returned to the Lower Mainland through Prince George.  I can't remember how many days the 2000-mile trip was because it happened twenty years ago, this year!  Oh, and as we travelled in April, the trip was five months before this blog began!

Three-Star Mariners

It's now the end of October and although my birthday isn't for another nine months, it is never too soon to start planning. 

Today, we went uptown and stopped at the Expedia Cruise Ship Centre. Whereas we have not used a physical travel agent for a decade, we still enjoy going up to see Arlene. We check online initially but let her do the final cruise bookings. She is older than us and likes travelling too. She always manages to give us a perk or two over the best deal we find anywhere. 

She was able to book a Holland America Line sojourn for the middle of next summer. I do enjoy having a birthday that falls during the peak point in the summer of the Nothern Hemisphere.  Arlene threw in a free birthday dinner for two in the specialty 'Pinnacle Grill' on the MS Nieuw Statendam. 

In 2019, on my 60th birthday, we were aboard a local, HAL cruise.  On July 23rd, in Skagway, AK, Jay and I jumped into a helicopter that flew us to the top of Meade Glacier. That was surely an exciting, one-of-a-kind present.

   

These last two years have not been kind to the cruise industry.  However, we are happy to know that for my 63rd, we'll again be on a new and different sea adventure.

Blogging in the 1960's

My dad sent out a few boxes of, as he called it, "old stuff" from the east coast. To save postage money and the hassle of customs declarations, my father sent them to friends in Washington State. Last weekend Joel and Lynne kindly brought up the duct-taped packages when visiting.

So today I've learned, perhaps, why I blog. It could be that this type of thing runs in my family. My mother, who passed away before I finished college, was apparently a scrapbooker. Do people still create baby books? I'd never really thought about the fact that making a scrapbook is a pre-tech way of doing exactly what I do at my eJournal and images. If anything this gives me a renewed enthusiasm for this blog.



My parents loaded a VW Camper Van in 1965 and headed to Alaska. They left Wendell, New Hampshire the summer before I started elementary school. I cannot say that I remember much of that first trip through many parts of Canada. But some of that trip can be relived through one of the things I just pulled out of a box. The red scrapbook boasts a little felt 'Thunderbird' totem my mom made. It looked like a four-foot wooden one we bought from Alaskan Indians. Unfortunately, upon our return, it was stolen from our lawn.



Unlike in the old receipt, I am sure that Jay and I paid much more than $0.50 a day to camp during our cross-Canada trip ten years ago. In fact, Manitoba's Parks and Natural Areas website shows that it now costs $9.45 to $16.80 for a basic services site. Oh my. For the lower number, that's what an annual 6.6% increase looks like over 46 years!

Big BC

I have this external drive, you see. It's used for old data. I archive a lot of junk there and so it's an excellent source for rediscovering old pictures. I am often surprised by what I find. Of course, I have a great many photographs already online. Still, I like the idea of resurrection. In this case, an old jpg file which would, ordinarily, never have lit a single screen pixel, has suddenly come to life! Today's example is from 2003. It was taken at the end of April on a ferry / road trip I may well have recounted here in the past. I am standing in British Columbia at the border to Hyder, Alaska. I remember just driving into Alaska as nobody was at the post. When returning a half hour later, a Canadian border guard stopped us. She was especially keen on knowing more about the hamster which was travelling with us.

April of 2003 was nearly six months before I started my eJournal and images. I find it hard to remember life before blogging though. Still, always a story teller, I did make this email message which I subsequently put online.

Young and Hip

Mr. Ken Greenbaum went to Sunapee, NH with a freshly minted teaching degree. At a mere 22 years old, he ended up teaching 5th grade. I was a student in his 5th-grade class in 1969/70. Now the 11 years between our ages aren't nearly as much . . . at least as a percentage. (If that's not mathematically correct, then blame him for my weak skills.)


I met Ken and his wife in Vancouver yesterday. They had come to town a few nights early. At 5:00 pm they departed on a Princess cruise ship bound for Alaska. Although they had seen much of the city because of a whirlwind tour on Sunday, we walked to Gastown. I'd like to thank the Greenbaums for picking up the cheque for lunch at 'The Spaghetti Factory'. The next time they're in town, it'll be my treat.

Flickr's Fun

Okay, I'll admit that Flickr's fun. It's full of configurable options and basically feels cool. It makes one quickly feel like a part of a vast network of image makers and collectors. Click the screen image here to see 20 images in my recently uploaded Beautiful BC collection.

Yesterday, I got a package from my dad. I had asked him to mail old slides to me. My mom used to take Kodachrome shots when we were on trips. For example, I wondered if he'd be able to find anything from our 1965 trip in a Volkswagon bus from New Hamsphire to Alaska. I really only recall the stories told by others as it was the year I started first grade. In fact, I believe I was a few days late for the start of classes as that's the only time my dad was able to arrange vacation time. The postman's delivery arrived with slides as well as other junk. There were quite a few fading paper prints too. Now, I'll have things to scan and include here over the next little while.

Perhaps this is why Flickr is so intriguing to me at the moment. In theory, a child born today can have a digital record of everyday life. There could be a universal image repository with tags for searching. It could grow to contain an entire lifetime of images and be easily accessible from any computer. My recently-arrived box full of yellowing parchment and dyes seems like such an anachronism.

(I should give my father some credit, instead of cushioning things with environmentally-unfriendly Styrofoam popcorn, he sent the items sandwiched between rolls of toilet paper. That's an added bonus that will keep on giving!)