Alaska Marine Highway-Prince Rupert, BC to Ketchikan, AK, USA

Alaska Marine Highway to Ketchikan  July 1st

Finally, the day has arrived when we board the Alaska Marine Highway! We’ve talking about this for so long now that we didn’t think it would ever get here. Our excitement was no less than a toddler waiting for Santa Claus to come. Our entire Marine Highway experience will be 21 days from Prince Rupert, BC to the final destination of Haines, AK.

We needed to be at the ferry boarding area 3 hours ahead to finalize our tickets, get in our assigned car lines and wait to go through the USA Customs area.  Since there are 6 stops on the ferry, they would have to arrange the cars, trucks and RVs so that they wouldn’t have to rearrange them on the ship to get them off at the right stop. Quite a logistical nightmare that they handled quite efficiently.

When we arrived there, a young man measured each of the vehicles separately. Tim would be driving the RV on board and I would be driving the car on board which would be less expensive than staying hooked up with a wasted 4 feet between the vehicles. That done, we walked down to the terminal office to get the many tickets we needed for the entire trip up the Inland Waterway. We will be getting off at each of the 6 stops and spending time at each location and thus needed two sets of 6 tickets which took a while for them to do.

At the counter there was a brochure about what you could not take across the border to the USA. We had read earlier about the restrictions, but this brochure was more detailed and forbade the transportation of any citrus at all as well some vegetables.   So, Tim put the oranges, apples and potatoes into a bag and asked where there was a trash can where he could dispose of them before crossing. He was told to just give them to someone down at the terminal and they would bring it to the homeless shelter. Sounded like a good idea, so he got back in the RV, waited his turn in line to go through customs. He had filled out his declaration form that he had no fruit with him. Being the good citizen that he is, when he drove up to the customs official’s window, he handed him his passport card, his declaration page and the bag of fruit et al. The officer said that he was trying to smuggle in the fruit and lied on his declaration page! Imagine Tim’s surprise! Tim explained what he was told and the Officer stated that he was now on American soil and should have gotten rid of it before hand. He told him he could conceivably fine him up to $300 but instead wrote him up that the fruit and vegetables were confiscated!

While Tim was doing that, I was sitting in another lane waiting for it to move. The woman in charge of organizing everyone there was getting a little perturbed that the folks on motorcycles kept coming down and parking where they shouldn’t as well as a couple of cars the fellow in the upper lot sent down too early it seemed. She said loud enough for folks to hear but to no one in particular, with an eye roll, “I need coffee!” and off she went into the terminal. By now we had been waiting almost 2 hours and people were out of their cars, talking, walking around and getting friendly. When she returned, there was yet another car that came down that shouldn’t have. She put her coffee down  in the middle of the parking lot and said to me, “Watch my coffee!” in a very authoritative manner as she went to speak to the folks in the newly arrived vehicle. So I watched the coffee and just before a walk on passenger headed ran over it with her roll on bag, I quickly ran to it and yelled, “Don’t spill her coffee. She’ll kill me.”  I saved the coffee and everyone just started to laugh and the woman seemed appreciative with a little grin. It lightened her spirit anyway and ours as well.

After boarding, we realized that we had lost an hour’s time. We were then on Alaska time which is 4 hours behind the east coast time instead of the Pacific time of 3 hours behind which we had been on for a while.

The weather went from cold in the morning to hot in the sun by the time we boarded.  We were able to change out of heavy clothes but keep our windbreakers before the ferry departed the shore. The scenery was as we imagined with verdant islands everywhere you looked. We saw a few whales blowing and a few tails as they dove, but none were close enough for a good photo op. We met a couple from Salem, Oregon, Nancy and Dave, on board and spent a fun 6 hours on the trip to Ketchican. 

On the upper deck of  the ferry,  folks are allowed to put up their tents instead of renting a cabin when they are on the ship for a longer passage than we had (6 hours to Ketchikan.) Or, some just put an extra padding on the lounge chairs and slept there. From Prince Rupert to Haines, it's about a day and a half.  

View of Ketchikan

View from Ferry on Inner Passage

Once we left the ship, we drove straight to the Walmart parking lot for the night. In the morning we will be heading back down to the Ferry Dock to take an inter- island ferry to Prince of Wales Island.

It feels great being here and anticipating our stops along the way!