2 1/2 days of water and into Juneau!

The first leg of our ferry ride is over.  We arrived in Juneau this morning at 0545, 30 minutes late as a sister ship was still at the dock.  Quite an experience.  At least for Jan and I, it was the longest we've ever spent continuously traveling somewhere.  I have a lot of pictures to share of our experience.  We got to the ferry dock in Bellingham early Friday for our 1800pm departure.  They wanted us there 3 hours prior, but with nervousness the word of the day we showed up about 1230, and still were not the first to arrive.  We got checked in and queued up for the statistical puzzle of loading.  With 7 destinations in total and vehicles getting off and on, all with different destinations, it has to be a huge challenge to figure where to put everyone!  And to make it just a bit more complicated, we found out there are 2 car decks, accessible by 2 elevators!  

The motorhomes in line

And the trucks in line

Our ship, the Columbia

Entrance to the car deck

Well we waited and waited and slowly they began to load, but by 1700pm we were still sitting in the parking lot!  They will never make a 1800 departure we thought.  Finally Jan and Tom with the trucks were loaded, then a little while later I got the nod, and Karen still sat.

Trucks in place

Here I come

Down the ramp

And onto the car deck

Tight squeeze!

Finally Karen got her turn.

About to enter the ramp

And in she goes!

Then as we all are pretty tired of sitting around, they button it up quite late, maybe 1845 or so, but announce that the ferry operates on Alaska time so it's only 1745, and off we go right on "time" at 1800!  All good and underway.

Beautiful view of Mt Baker

And it's not long before we see the first sea life. 

An orca

The weather is gorgeous, warm and sunny.  It is absolutely beautiful.  We are on the calm waters of the Inside Passage surrounded by green tree covered hills punctuated by sharp peaked mountains iced with snow.  And as we are reminded by the locals, this is rare wonderful summer weather.  We walk the decks, explore the ship, check out our staterooms, and of course, have some wine before our picnic dinner we brought with us.  As night falls, late I might add since it is the summer solstice, we wind down to our respective cabins.

The morning comes early as well, but the weather has changed overnight.  It is overcast and tendrils of fog hang all over.

We spend the day mostly watching the changing scenery and weather, in and out of rain showers now.  We see some humpback whales, but they are pretty elusive and seem to disappear once they are spotted.

Now not everyone has cabins on board.  On the aft deck there is a small area where they allow tents, so a small city has sprung up.

Home sweet home for 2 1/2 days or at least until the rains come

We wander around all day, and spend some nice time when it's not raining back on the aft deck.

Tom and I enjoying the views

Another day goes by and morning brings rain and wind, up to 35 mph.  We have a couple of spots where we go into the open sea for an hour or so, and couple of times the ride gets a bit rolly.  But then we head into a narrow area where we are met by a school or pod of dolphins, tons of them!

Dolphins everywhere!

Jan gets a great shot!

Then we have a really unusual experience.  We hear an announcement on the boat that a black bear is trying to swim across in front of the boat, and that if you look on the right side you should be able to see him, and sure enough there he was.  As we got closer he had a change of heart and decided to go back to the island from whence he had come:-)

Here he comes

There he goes

We make our first port after 36 hours of sailing in Ketchikan with hard rain and strong winds.

Cruise ships around the corner

Ketchikan

Fishing boats

Arriving at the dock in the rain

They announce the car deck is open, then they call Karen to move her coach to another spot on the car deck so several tractor trailers can load.

All moved

Then we continue to Wrangell.

Arriving in Wrangell

Then after Wrangell we enter the Wrangell Narrows on our way to Petersburg, and as the name suggests it is amazingly narrow and winding for a ship of our size and we all wonder more than once how we can possibly be so close to the shore without going aground?  But it is beautiful and exciting!

Really close to shore

Wow, look how close those rocks are

Look at all the channel markers!

And what we were doing all the while?
We were having a delicious dinner with what else but wine.

Then we docked in Petersburg our last stop until Juneau.

Petersburg

The long, long ramp to the ship

After Petersburg we all turned in for our 0515 arrival into Juneau.  We needed to collect our stuff, check out of our cabins and be ready on the car deck to disembark.  And as I started this long, long post, we were a little late, but in the pouring rain we all got safely off the ferry, parked the rigs in the parking area as we were way too early to get into our campground, and headed into Juneau proper for a delicious breakfast at the Sandpiper Cafe.