Moominmama's Adventures: Inside Passage

In which Moominmama travels three days on the ferry through the Inside Passage to reach Alaska...

The Moominhouse was one of the last three vehicles to be loaded onto the Alaska Marine Highway ferry in Bellingham, Washington, and as a result, Moominmama lost out on a lounge chair for sleeping accommodations. They were all taken by the time I boarded. I did find a nice indoor corner to spread out my sleeping pad and sleeping bag so no complaints in the end.
The journey winds through an amazing array of inland seas and islands, a few with lighthouses or summer camps. Moominmama saw an orca breach, twist and splash down. Also deer in the early morning that come to the edge of the water at low tide, and fishing boats dwarfed by the size of the ferry, which is still nowhere near the size of the cruise ships in the major ports. 

The ferry is just the right size to squeeze through some of the narrower sections of the Inside Passage, though they posted a lookout the bow during low tide.

It was a tight fit sometimes! This particular ferry, the Columbia, only travels the Inside Passage and other ferries that travel across open ocean to the Anchorage side have special fins that can be lifted to make the boat steadier in large waves. 

There was one section of the passage where we were not protected by land or islands on both sides -- and Moominmama had to go out onto the deck to avoid getting seasick from the ocean swells. So it's probably for the best that I won't be making that ocean crossing.

We left Washington on Friday evening and on Sunday morning  reached our first stop in Alaska: Ketchikan Island at 5:30 a.m.

My friend Connie, bless her heart, got up and met me at the ferry. I only had an hour but she brought me up to a nearby lake for a short hike before returning me to the boat.

Connie, and her adorable dog Roxie, are folks I met earlier this year, first at Organ Pipe National Monument and then again at Zion. She travels with Roxie in a nicely-equipped van during her off-season and runs a gift shop in Ketchikan during the summer. 

The ferry doesn't dock in the town, however, so she drove out to the ferry terminal to meet me and picked a hike close to the terminal.

This is temperate rainforest and incredibly green! Apart from the path, everything not growing at a furious clip is covered in moss, some of it hanging from the trees. It actually reminded me of Louisiana. 

It was lovely to stretch my legs and get some dog-affection before getting back on the ferry. Two other island stops (Wrangell and Petersburg) were too short to justify getting off the boat.

But the morning of my final day on the ferry, we landed in Sitka, on Baranof Island. There was a bus that for $10 would take us into the the downtown and then bring us back in time to resume our journey.

Sitka turns out to have a fascinating history. The Russians overpowered the Tlingit to take possession of the island in 1804 (after the Tlingit burned the Russians out in 1802) and named it Novo Arkhangelsk. The Russian influence remains, for example in the historic Russian Orthodox Church in the center of town. Russia sold the island to the U.S. in 1867, but the community has done a good job of preserving both its Tlingit and Russian history. 

Moominmama got to take a walk through the Sitka National Historic Park, where the Tlingit had built a fort to fight the Russian incursion. It's an open grassy space now, with placards to show the design of the former fort. The park is also dotted with Tlingit totem poles made by local artists.
This one here was one of my favorites! The early morning outing was a welcome excursion before the boat arrived that evening in Juneau. 

The entry into Juneau's harbor surprised me by including my first views of the Mendenhall Glacier. But even better was getting to my campground and discovering I could see the glacier from the edge of the lake where I'm staying!

After joyfully collapsing for the night in my own Moominhouse bed, I set out in the morning for the Mendenhall Glacier Visitors Center and snapped this photo below. I will have an opportunity end of this week to get closer to the glacier via kayak thanks to a tour I signed up for. So check next week for more.

The Alaska adventure has begun!



 

Location: Juneau, AK, USA

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