Farewell to Malaspina! Hello Juneau!

AlaskaFest 2005 - Friday, June 10, 2005

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

The last day on the Malaspina

It was the last morning, and when we woke up, the ferry had already gone overnight and docked in Sitka. Sitka used to be the Russian capital of Alaska before us Yanks bought Alaska from them. There's not too much left of Russian culture in Sitka, except for the Russian Orthodox Catholic church in the middle of town. So what was cool was that at the Sitka ferry stop, the tour operators came out to meet the boat and offered us a quick two-hour tour of the city and national forest reserve. Pretty cool that they did this, unlike Ketchikan. Anyways, the tour bus and guide drove us into town and we first got to explore a national forest reserve, which had amazing trees and TONS of bald eagles. I had never seen any of these before, and to see so many here was amazing. The forest smelled amazing too, weirdly enough. After the forest, we got to go downtown Sitka, which had the before-mentioned cathedral. We got to go inside the cathedral, which isn't very big, but it is neat to see remnants of the Russian culture. There was then a chance to go explore the town for a little bit, but then we had to take the bus quickly back to the ferry as we still had quite a ways to go to Juneau, which was about 9 hours away by ferry. And thus our concluding Malaspina journey began. This may have been the most beautiful sea voyage section, as the mountains were amazing, the sky was crazy, there were rainbows, and the approach into Juneau showed that Alaskan skies stay bright very very long into the night (and it turned out this was just a teaser for later on in the journey). We finally got into Juneau about 10pm or so, and after checking in to the hotel, we weren't tired so we decided to see what the nightlife of Juneau is like. And after driving around and finally getting our bearings, it seemed that Juneau nightlife is actually pretty fun. We went to the main 'club' street and went to the Viking, which was pretty cool with a few different rooms (one karaoke, one dance area, one just the bar area). I definitely felt old though, as it was all college kids (hell, I think there were high schoolers too), but hey, it was nice to see civilization again. And then finally, it was time to go to sleep - we had a big day ahead of us.

Inside Passage - Sitka to Juneau photos

Nah. He loves pictures. Especially with stuffed animals.

More seafaring scenery

Looking back

Pretty scenery

A rainbow!

The sun slowly sets

Wow

At last, approaching Juneau/Aukes Bay

Aukes Bay is awesome

There's me

And Jason

Pretty Juneau awaits

Almost 10 and it's not really all that dark

Ready to depart the Malaspina's hold

Time for the Saturn to take over the job of getting us around

Shoot me an email if you have any comments!