Alaska Part 3 - The Yankee Boat to Juneau

"There's always next year.. right??"

Day 7ish - Ferry ride to Juneau

After another nice early start to a new day, I boarded the American Vessel known as the Manatsuka. The letters in Manatsuka might be a little mixed up but you get the general gist of what it was anyway (It was a boat for anyone that was confused)

As we boarded we were informed that we were now on Alaska time. So basically if the captain of the ship lost his way and appeared in the Tasman Sea my watch would be fairly wrong because the boat is part of the USA!! And will remain that way!

Salute!!


Woah.. who let one go?

The ferry itself was not quite as nice as the Canadian version, but as it had no guns attached to the Port or Starboard sides I can't blame the American government for not spending too much money on it.

This part of the trip took about 24 hours and it gave me the opportunity to take in a few of the smaller coastal villages/towns/barns that littered the coast line of Alaska. We even stopped at a few places on the way up to Juneau which was unexpected (to me).

The first place we stopped in at wasn't that far into the trip, I had just polished off a vastly overpriced hamburger and some fries when the burser (whatever that actually means) announced over the loudspeaker


"We are just about to pasflfsf inaor in 30 minutes if you awofj to kudoo sddjo please be back in slfkifo minutes"

I checked with Christian (the swiss guy from the hostel) what this meant and we eventually decided that we were stopping somewhere and we could go ashore for a while if we wanted to. Being short of American money (if you want to call having 0 American dollars as being short..) I decided to go ashore to find an ATM and to have a look around. The towns name was Ketchikan (and i presume it still is) and it took me about 20 minutes to find an ATM. I eventually found one in the closest building outside of the ferry terminal.
Typical.

[b] Ketchikan (Population >100) [/b]

This town will forever stick in my mind as the place where I saw some Salmon swimming upstream. Man, those fish are pretty incredible (if somewhat stupid). They basically crawl over rocks to go upstream to lay their eggs. And alot of them don't even make it. I've always thought that spider's had the stupidest reproductive methods out of all the animal kingdom but I think they have a new challenger.

The dead fish really stunk. I took a photo of the stream where the fish were working their way up but the size that this blogsite makes photos come out as you couldn't really make out anything in it. So here is a picture of a can of salmon



Christian, an Aussie girl and I walked up to the main part of town, then Christian and I turned around and went back on the boat. This was my first walk on Alaskan soil and so far I felt exactly the same as what I had previously, so that was something.


Christian and the Aussie Girl happy to have found the fire station sign.

Ketchikan was actually quite big, but I didn't see much of it so I can't say whether its worth visiting or not, but the Aussie girl told me that there was a brothel there that was world famous.. or was it that an old lady had a collection of cats? I'm not really sure. Either way, if you are doing a trip up to Alaska's pan-handle then its probably worth dropping in for a look.

Back on the boat and the crew had put on a video - National Treasure, which actually turned out to be pretty watchable. I also got to see some humpback whales, a seal and some dolphins.. american's call them something different, porpoise? I actually thought they were the same thing but who knows.. (jo?)

After this, I slept a bit and then another movie was shown. SpongeBob Squarepants. It was actually suprisingly good, so stupid it was funny..I think its made by the same guys that made Ren and Stimpy.

[b] Wrangell [Population <1000] [/b]

At about 11:30pm the boat stopped again at a place named Wrangell. It was pretty dark here so we didn't really get to see too much, but i took a couple of photos


Wrangell, A huge place, id like to spend at least a month here to see everything it had to offer


A nice little church 1 block from the town centre, 12 miles from some lake and less than 1 block from everywhere else in town.

It was kinda chilly there. It actually felt like winter, something ive missed out on coming from Australia's summer to Canada's summer.

Christian and I then got back on the boat


Me on the boat

We then had a few beers (Alaskan) with a guy from Calgary (who was Clark Kent.. im sure of it) and discussed the virtues of the races and government policy before all deciding to do some light reading. Before long the boat stopped again at St Petersburg, Russia. The captain, realising his mistake, backtracked a little and ended up at Petersburg, Alaska. Luckily the whole time we were in Russia I never had to change the time on my watch, because i never left the boat.

Petersburg (Population 10 last est. 1920)

Christian chickened out of this little expedition, so I went out alone (it was about 2:30am so i didn't really blame him) and got as far as the town sign


Petersburg - The Phantom Sign.
Assumption 1 - The state troopers take medical training in this town.
Assumption 2 - The hospital is a caravan and/or winnebago.

I don't think I missed anything.

Quote of the Day - If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet. Taxman
The Beatles - Revolver.