All Aboard!

The time had come.   As had been planned and discussed in great detail for over a year now, on June 5, 2015, we boarded the U.S. Columbia ferry boat in Bellingham, WA, for the 37.4 hour journey to Alaska.  Accompanying Bernie and me were my sister, Kathy, and husband, Jim, who have a Denali fifth wheel trailer.  It was an unexpected and wonderful treat to have nephew Travis, wife Grace, and dog Kirby come down from their home in Vancouver to see us off on our adventure.

Kathy, Jim, Grace Travis, Kirby, Peggy, Bernie

Our level of excitement was high the day before we left as we stocked up on provisions, picked up our tickets, and did a “dry run” on getting our rigs to the ferryboat dock. On the big day itself, we lined up with all the other campers, cars and trucks to board the Columbia.   We had many an interesting conversation with our fellow passengers in that line, each of them with different objectives and itineraries taking them all over Southeast Alaska from this single point of departure.   Some of them were off for a vacation like us, some of them were heading up to to start new jobs, and one was doing routine delivery of produce as he does twice weekly, every week!  The Marine Highway is the only source of transportation other than flying for both tourists and the people who live in Southeast Alaska.  The area is comprised of nothing but islands and coastal communities that you cannot drive to, and we will be making a 7 day stop in each of six such communities in the next 6 weeks:   Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, Sitka, Juneau, and Skagway/Haines.

Tickets in hand!   Do we look a little excited or what?

US Columbia 

Lily in line

Lily labelled for Ketchican

Lily gets "sniffed" for drugs...she passed

The "line up"

   

When time came for boarding, we were beside ourselves with excitement!   The vehicle decks of Columbia filled up fast with 150 or so cars and trucks, and we were packed in pretty darned tightly!   After getting our rigs in their designated places, we climbed up to the passenger decks and checked into our stateroom.   It was really quite nice, with bunk beds for four, a shower, toilet, and big picture window from which we could watch the scenery go by.

Lily in bowels of the ship, right beside a huge load of fishing nets

Our four-person stateroom

View out of our cabin window

Others on board chose to sleep on reclining chairs in one of the lounges, or in tents on the open decks.   In our younger years we may have opted for that, but these “older” bones were happy to have the nice stateroom to sleep in.  

Tents all taped down to keep them from blowing off the ship

Our ferryboat launched at 6:00 p.m. on June 5.  We were on deck to watch it happen, thrilled to see the city of Bellingham slowly disappear, and the beautiful coast of Washington and then British Columbia become our focal point.

Kathy and Jim, happy to be "off"!

Mount Baker as seen over Bellingham from the Columbia

Mt Baker as seen from British Columbia coast

As you can see, we had perfect weather for our journey, blue skies, warmth, and sunshine—all rather unusual for the Pacific Northwest, and we were grateful for sure!  The ferryboats follow the sheltered inside passage to Alaska, and as such there were only three times in our journey when we were exposed to the open ocean.  We were quite aware when we passed through them, however, as the waves became large enough to cause the boat to pitch and roll beneath us.

View from deck

Purser making announcements

Huge "Holland America" tour boat goes by

Tandem bicycle couple we met invited us to share lunch of smoked salmon

View of British Columbia coastline floating by

Silly family!

Lighthouse

Quirkle

Royal Princess Island floats by

Thirty seven and a half hours on a ferryboat is a long time, but we passed it merrily enough reading, playing Quirkle, watching on-board movies, visiting with other passengers, and getting what exercise we could walking the decks and staircases.  We all slept quite soundly at night in our bunk beds, feeling a bit like four kids at their gramma’s!

And when we awakened the second morning, we knew we were close to our first destination!   We crowded around the window of our stateroom, wanting to catch a glimpse of Ketchican, Alaska, our home for the next 7 days.

The next blog entry will report highlights from our first destination...Ketchikan!