Monday, February 11, 2013

Juneau to Ketchikan

Since the movers wouldn't do a weekend pack, they came on Thursday for packing and Friday for the loading.  I knew by Friday or Saturday the house would be cleaned out, so instead of doing the full 3 day ferry ride from Juneau to Bellingham on Tuesday, I made plans to break it up by taking the Sunday ferry to Ketchikan and staying there couple nights before catching the ferry rest of the way to Bellingham.  It might seem an inconvenience to break the trip up like this, but it's actually brilliant and works great for us because then Millie wouldn't have to be cooped up in the car for 3 days straight.  You see, you can take pets on the ferry, but they have to stay in the car for the whole duration except when in port or during pet calls, which is infrequent.  Three days would be tough for any pet, but even more so for an active 2 year old lab.  Getting the chance to walk her in the middle of the trip helps a lot.

The Sunday ferry to Ketchikan has many stops in between - Hoonah, Sitka, Kake, Petersburg, Wrangell.  Since there are several port calls, there are no pet calls on this trip.  We wanted to walk Millie every chance we got, so we got up even for the late-night, middle-of-the-night, and early-morning port calls.  Getting up at 3am two nights in a row to walk Millie was not fun.  The odd schedule made it hard for us to get a good night's sleep so we ended up sleeping during the day a lot.  Lots of folks bring sleeping bags and even air mattresses to sleep in the lounges, but we had a comfy cabin to stay in, which was nice.  Unlike my Northbound trip two years ago, we had a window this time so we could enjoy the view, which was nice even though it was raining the whole time.  The facilities on Taku is similar to Malaspina (ferry from Juneau to Bellingham), so there is a cafeteria, bar, lounges, observation deck, solarium, and a theatre.  I don't think we did much else but catch bits and pieces of movies and do some reading.  All in all, that leg of the trip was mostly spent sleeping and walking the dog.

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