Patty and Bill's Excellent Alaska Adventure

(Or What We Did On Our Summer Vacation)

In August, 2006, Patty and Bill took a cruise through Alaska's Inside Passage.  The cruise was on the Cruise West ship, Spirit of Endeavour, and  went from Ketchikan to Juneau, AK, essentially around the southeast panhandle of the state.  The places we visited included Ketchikan, Hyder, Petersburg, Tracy Arm, Frederick Sound, Sitka, Glacier Bay National Park, Skagway, Haines and Juneau.

The following is a brief travelogue describing our trip - though since both Bill and Patty are photographers, you'll most find a lot more space devoted to photos than to text.  We'll warn those of you that have a slow internet connection that these pages have many photos, which may make the pages slow to load.

We chose this particular cruise for a couple of reasons.  The Spirit of Endeavour is a small cruise ship, with a capacity of 102 passengers.  This allows the ship to go where the big cruise ships can't, and generally to get closer to the wildlife and the scenery.  Also, we went in August on the cruise that stops at Hyder, AK, in the hopes of seeing bears as they fed on the salmon heading upstream to spawn. It was our first trip with Cruise West - we had a great time, and Captain Mike did a fantastic job getting us close to the wildlife.

Ketchikan

We flew into Ketchikan on August 9, the day before the ship left on the cruise, so we had a little time to explore the area. Flying in from the east coast pretty much did us in on the first day other than a brief walk through town. We spent the night at the Westcoast Cape Fox Lodge. If you're ever in Ketchikan and need a place to stay, the Cape Fox Lodge is wonderful.

When we checked into our hotel, the Sapphire Princess (which holds about 2,700 passengers) was just pulling up to the pier in Ketchikan, so the above photo shows the view from our hotel room window.  Patty, who had never been on a cruise before, was beginning to understand why we were looking for a small cruise boat.  If I recall, Ketchikan was expecting roughly 10,000 visitors off of cruise ships on the day of our departure.

Copyright 2006. William Lawrence.

On the day of the cruise we woke up early (the advantage of a 4 hour time difference) to take some early morning shots before breakfast.  After a nice breakfast at the Pioneer Restaurant, including some reindeer sausage, we wound up taking a tour around the island with Dave of Ketchikan Taxi Cab Tours. This is definitely a worthwhile thing to do, since as we talked with Dave, he was able to suggest some places to visit that we hadn't heard about. He also recommended a great place for lunch - Burger Queen - they even deliver your lunch to the bar across the street so you can enjoy a beer with your halibut sandwich.

Creek Street in Ketchikan is now shops and restaurants, although it used to be the area's red light district.  Note this is low tide, so that you can see the buildings are built up on pilings.  During high tide, the water was close to the bottom of the buildings.  The water running through is Ketchikan Creek - if you looked closely in the water you could see salmon swimming upstream to spawn.

Copyright 2006. Patty Hankins.

A little further upstream on Ketchikan Creek was a lovely set of small falls - surrounded by foliage.

Copyright 2006. Patty Hankins.

Alaska was great for the cloudy and foggy landscape photos such as this one of the mountains bordering the city of Ketchikan - most of the time we were there it was either heavily overcast, foggy, or misting rain.  Fortunately, the hard rains held off until the disembarkation day in Juneau, and for the wildlife photos, this is actually good weather since you avoid the glare from an overhead sun.

Copyright 2006. William Lawrence.

Heading down to the dock area, you can see the float planes leaving regularly to take visitors on sightseeing tours.  The one above was taking off during one of the few times the clouds broke while we were in Alaska, and we could see a little sunlight.

Copyright 2006. William Lawrence.

And of course, there was a bald eagle hanging around the area of Ketchikan Creek - here he is surveying his domain from the top of a tree.

  Copyright 2006. William Lawrence.

This image is available for purchase.

Throughout the city, there are some modern totem poles and native Alaskan sculptures on display. This eagle totem is near the cruise docks.

Copyright 2006. Patty Hankins.

One of the place Dave drove us to was Totem Bight State Park. The park contains a recreated native village and fourteen totem poles.

This photo shows the Tlinget carvings on the outside of a building where new totem poles are being carved.

  Copyright 2006. Patty Hankins.

This is a three headed eagle carving inside one of the buildings at Totem Bight state park.

Copyright 2006. Patty Hankins.

After a presentation at the hotel about the Tlinget culture, we boarded our ship, and embarked on our journey.

Our next stop was Hyder.

Other Pages of Photos from our Cruise

Hyder, Petersburg, Tracy Arm, Frederick Sound, Sitka, Glacier Bay, Skagway and Haines