Bellingham to somewhere off the west coast of British Columbia

AlaskaFest 2005 - Tuesday, June 7, 2005

Inside Passage
1: Bellingham - Queen Charlotte
2: QC to S of Ketchikan
3: Ketchikan to Petersburg
4: Sitka to Juneau

Seattle to Bellingham

Let the adventure begin! The ferry was leaving from Bellingham at 6pm this evening, and if you had a car (which Jason did), you had to check in 3 hours early, so we figured we had plenty of time if we left by noon, as Bellingham was about 80 miles away and should take about 1.5 hours to get there. No real time crunch then if we got up by 9, got our shit together, and left by about 10:30/11 ish. HA! So, the first part went well - we got up, got ready, packed, and checked out, giving the valet the car key to pick up our car. We're waiting for it when the valet comes up and says "our time looks to be a little flat..." Well, isn't that a fine howyadoin? I look over to Jason's face - his eyes are closed and you can tell he's trying to figure out what else is gonna go wrong. So, we head downstairs to the garage, manly take the very flat (not so little of a flat) tire off and put on the puny spare, and Jason heads off to Goodyear, and I stay behind to watch over his enormous amount of stuff that we had to remove from the trunk in order to get to the spare. So I wait, and wait, and wait, and wait.... I get a lot of reading done of my Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the part where they go to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe - very cool), and wait some more, got some food delivered thanks to Jason (which explains the ketchup bottle in the picture below), and finally listening to my mp3 player and about to break in to my best rendition of Risky Business when finally, about 2.5 hours later at around 1pm, Jason finally came back, with all new tires. Better safe than broken down in the middle of the Canadian or Alaskan tundra.

We then got on the road about 1:30, after packing all his shit back up into the trunk, with both of us hoping like hell that this was the last of our car troubles. A fast 1 and 1/4 hours later, we got to Bellingham, Washington. We quickly stopped by a market to get some junk food for snacking on while on the boat ride, and then headed to the harbor, hoping we weren't too late. Yeah.... didn't have to worry about that. We checked in, paid for our fares, and then proceeded to sit in the car for another two hours, just waiting until TPTB said we could drive on. FINALLY, after that amount of waiting, we drove on, got our stateroom keys, and checked in. We then made a quick survey of the amenities on board the MV Malaspina, our home for the next four days.

The MV Malaspina had a great amount of amenities, but don't think it was a cruise ship by any means. There was a bar (thankfully), a decent cafeteria style dining facility with a dining room that had window views from the rear of the ship, a room with tables to just relax in, apparently, an observation room at the front of the ship that had occasional talks by a National Forest Service park ranger, and a nice deck to walk around for plenty of amazing views. So here's my quick pitch: this is definitely an economical yet still interesting and fun way to see the Alaskan Inside Passage. As you'll see in the pages to come, there's plenty of stops and time to see sights, and you even go places the cruise ships can't. Here's a link to the Alaska Marine Highway website, if you're ever thinking about doing this but can't afford outrageous cruise line prices.

So, back to the story. We did launch at around 6pm, and confirmed that indeed we weren't stopping until Ketchikan, Alaska, which is 38 hours from Bellingham. So lots of time ahead to kill on the boat. But with Soft Batch Chocolate Chip cookies, Yahtzee, and MP3 players, plus a great bar with Alaskan beer, 38 hours is nothing!!

Inside Passage - Day 1 photos

Jason too

Driving into the beast

The Canadian portion of our voyage

The Alaskan Inside Passage portion

Jason sees something from the Observation Deck!

And I give sarcastic commentary on it

Video games! Woo hoo!

Entering stateroom 130 (not ours...j/k)

My side of the room

Jason at our stateroom's window

Me at the stern of the ship

Blurry sunset pic of the first night

Enjoying some fine Alaskan Ale (which I am right now as well, in memory of the trip)

I passed out first - hence I get the Tongass picture

Shoot me an email if you have any comments!