Ferry Trip Delivers Alaska On The Cheap

Alaskans call it the Marine Highway. Tourists call it a bargain.

For the isolated communities of coastal Alaska, state ferries take the place of roads. These economical, reliable ships serve both larger ports and smaller villages, threading through narrow channels that larger cruise liners dare not enter. On the ferries, independent travelers who are willing to forgo some luxury can shape their own itinerary and make the acquaintance of Alaska’s people as well as its scenery.

For 10 days this summer, my wife and I toured Alaska’s Inside Passage by ferry. We had spent winter evenings poring over maps, books, brochures, ferry schedules and Alaska Magazine, making plans and reservations. In summer, ferry runs from Bellingham are crowded and early reservations are wise.

Though some Alaska ferries have cabins, we thought it sounded fun, and certainly less expensive, to camp with fellow travelers on the decks. We spent $286 apiece on an assortment of one-way, walk-on ferry tickets that took us from port to port. Hotels, tours, food and airfare home brought total expenses for the two of us to $2,400.

Hours before the Friday afternoon departure, foot passengers already were in line at the Alaska ferry system’s spiffy new terminal in Bellingham. Backpacks bulging with picnic food, clothes, sleeping bags, mattresses and camera gear, we strolled up the plank and searched the M.V. Columbia for a cozy spot to settle.

Reclining chairs in the glass-roofed solarium filled rapidly. Some fastened tents to the open steel deck with duct tape.

The ferry’s carpeted lounges offered pleasant places to sleep, as well. There, we joined several young Alaskan families who were spreading out quilts near a wall of windows with a panoramic view.

As the Columbia left Puget Sound in its wake and steamed through the San Juan Islands, some passengers celebrated over fresh seafood in the formal dining room. We opened our packs, laid out a picnic and watched the scenery glide by our windows.

Ahead, the winding blue water led straight toward a slowly setting sun. The mountains grew taller. Lighthouses glowed. We each brought a book to read, but after a few pages we laid the books aside and didn’t touch them for a week.

During the two-day journey to Alaska, life on the ferry took on a communal rhythm. The captain announced a whale sighting and passengers surged to the rail, cameras in hand. Children scurried, squalled and played. Their parents swapped stories and took turns at baby-sitting duty. The popular cafeteria brewed fine coffee to warm the misty mornings.

As the channel narrowed, a friendly 70-year-old from Texas squinted into the trees and pointed: “Is that a bald eagle? OK! I can tell the folks at home I saw one! Do you think there’s b’ar in these woods? I just saw some bushes move … .”

Twice a day, passengers could go to the vehicle deck to tend their animals. One trailer held several llamas who escaped, leading the ferry’s crew on a merry chase between the cars and trucks.

Out on deck a tattooed woman in leather shorts and a tank top stood in the cold wind and smoked a large cigar. Several feet away my wife, bundled in a parka, giggled and handed me a note: “I feel like such a wimp,” it said.

The ferry made its first stop in Ketchikan, a community whose economy was shaken this summer by a pulp mill closure and a salmon glut. But another industry was booming.

Now the gold goes north to Alaska - on enormous cruise liners, each holding more people than most Alaska towns. For them, the docks are being enlarged.

The guide on our trip to Ketchikan’s totem pole park owns a fishing boat, but said an oversupply of salmon meant fishermen were getting only 5 to 7 cents a pound for their catch. So he was driving a tour bus.

Rain swept the water and blurred nearby hills. Villages came and went. At some, we disembarked. At others, there wasn’t time. Tides, so rapid that anchored buoys carved a wake in the current, dictated the ferry’s schedule through the narrow island channels. In hidden coves, picturesque cabins perched on 20-foot pilings. Eagles cried from the trees.

Three days into our voyage, with whales splashing all around, sunset lit the snowy peaks of Baranof Island. After a moonlit cruise to the island’s western shore we reached Sitka, known a century ago as the “Paris of the Pacific” and still, to our eyes, the loveliest city in Southeast Alaska. Towering mountains crowd the town against its island-dotted harbor. Visitors kayak, fish, marvel at native artifacts in the Sheldon Jackson Museum and tour the remnants of Sitka’s Russian past, including an orthodox cathedral.

A few hours out of Sitka, George Holly materialized on the stern of our next ferry, the M.V. LaConte. Standing alone at the rail and pounding a handmade elkskin drum, he chanted an Athabascan song. His long black hair whipped in the wind and his powerful baritone voice floated astern into the splendor of his native land.

At Hoonah, Miles Murphy wheeled his invalid wife aboard the LaConte. He pulled her wheelchair close to his table in the cafeteria, leaned his head on her shoulder and closed his eyes. I sat nearby, and we began to visit.

An Irish ancestor gave Murphy his name, and Tlingit ancestors gave him his heritage. He served as Hoonah’s mayor for a dozen years. Now, he battles bureaucrats over his wife’s medical coverage and laments the spreading clear-cuts near his island home.

There is hope, he said, in his tribe’s young men. Some agree with him that the tribal corporation should log more selectively for the sake of the land. He wheeled his wife outside to watch the whales leaping in the brilliant morning sun.

Thus began a day of staggering beauty. Our ferries stopped at Juneau, Haines and finally Skagway, the end of the Inside Passage. Along the way, adjectives lost all power to describe the mountains and the waters of the Lynn Canal, a glacial fjord.

At Skagway, the gift shops seemed superfluous. The three-hour railroad trip to White Pass was pretty, but overpriced at $75 a ticket.

We rented a car and drove into Yukon Territory, tracing the route of the Klondike gold rush. The gold fields are quiet now, but there is a greater treasure in the north - a treasure that will bring us back again.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 photos (2 colors)

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO Call the Alaska Marine Highway System, (800) 642-0066, for details about fares and ferry schedules. Southeast Alaska Tourism Council, (800) 423-0568, offers a brochure, “Guide for the Independent Traveler.” Study the ads and articles in Alaska Magazine. For subscription information, contact the magazine at 4220 B St., Suite 210, Anchorage, Alaska, 99503, or (800) 288-5892. Also helpful is Lynn and Ed Readicker-Henderson’s “Adventure Guide to Coastal Alaska and the Inside Passage” (Hunter Publishing, 1996), written for tourists traveling on the ferries.