ferry travels in the alaskan golf, june

we left nanna in seward and hitched to whittier where our ferry to southeast alaska would departure the following day.
it's hard to understand just how isolated the alaskan towns are and just how humongous this state is. the roads in alaska lead to one place and one place only. when you get to where you want to go, you've most likely reached the end of the road and must backtrack to go anywhere else.
whittier is a brilliant example of this isolation, since it is not only placed at the very end of the road, but also on the other side of a great mountain range. to get to whittier you have to follow a tunnel through the mountains, but since the tunnel had to be long and explosives were expensive, the road through the tunnel is a one way street. so ones every two hour traffic going one way can pass, and ones every two hour traffic going the other way can pass. so you wanna time it right. fortunately hitching through the tunnel was not a problem, and we got to whittier on a sunny afternoon - a rare experience in this part of the state.

being this isolated does something to a town, and we spend the better part of two pretty weird days in this place. fortunately there was some amazing hiking to be had, so we hiked up this mountain where this beautiful glacier lake appeared on top.

the view was stunning.
down in the bay you can see what was to become the first cruise ship of many that we saw along our travels in southeast. these little babies pest most of the major towns in that part of the state and unfortunately turns them into rather uninteresting tourist traps. we tried to avoid them as much as we could, but we got our fair share of cruise ship encounters.

coming down was without a doubt the best part of the hike! walking around in snow with the warm sun blasting down on you, having to take of your top because of the powerful heat, is an amazing experience. we were blessed with incredible weather for the better part of our trip. people told us that they had seen less than a week of this kind of weather all of last summer.

we went back down and tried to pass the last couple of hours before our departure in a constructive way. we drank coffee and tried out the local swings.

and then we left. finally. i had been very excited about this very feature of my alaskan travels. traveling by ferry was wonderful, even if it was remarkably more expensive than sticking your thumb out, and eventually became a hard blow to our travel budget. despite the constant buzzing from the engine, it is a very peaceful and relaxing way to travel, and both megan and i were delighted that we were finally being forced to sit down and think and do nothing. we read a lot of books, wrote in our diaries, and stared out in the beautiful nothingness.
the first distance we covered on ferry was across the alaskan golf and took us three days. i loved every part of it - except a couple of hour during the second day when some high waves forced me to lay flat on my little bed in the solarium. if you don't want to spend money on a cabin you can just put up your tent on the deck or grab one of the plastic chairs and make a little nest. it's pretty amazing.

imagine nothing but this for as far as your little eyes can see.

i woke up at six in the morning to this.

we sailed to juneau, but didn't stay for long, since we had another ferry to catch to skagway. this town, we had heard, was a true tourist town, and we only went because of a pressing problem of mine. my days as a legal alien were about to be over, and i had to go to canada in order to be able to re-enter as a regular tourist. we were wondering around in this weird town, looking for a place to eat breakfast, when we saw these cool-looking kids standing around with kayak equipment. megan, with her admirable and at times ridicules american straight forward attitude turned to them and asked: you don't happen to be going to canada, do you? well, turned out they were. long story short, we ended up in the back of this kids car, driving all the way to canada, getting a new visa, and hitch hiking back in less than four hours. so much for all of my visa anxiety!

when we got back to skagway with the rest of the day ahead of us, we figured: why not just climb a mountain? so we did.

the hike turned out to be a bit more strenuous than we had expected, and we were very excited when we finally reached the top. we had to jump, of course.

the kids we had hitched with to canada had invited us to come stay with them in their green bus for the night. naturally, that was too good to refuse. some of the kids turned out to be climbers, so some of us went climbing, and i finally was able to justify having carried around my climbing gear for more than a month.

although skagway was full of fun people, we weren't too impressed. we wanted more wild adventures! so we took another ferry to haines. this place turned out to be the best place of all. small and quint, surrounded by mountains and water. It had the same cuteness and alternative scene as skagway but without the tourist. both megan and i fell in love. it hardly made it less amazing that we immediately found two guys who took us under their wings. they let us dumb our stuff at their place, drove us to the trail head of the hike we wanted to do, invited us to come stay at their place the following night, and promised us to go atv'ing with them. something about being two young girls alone in the world - you're never ever alone!

this hike was mind-blowing.

we were very, very excited, as you can imagine.

we made it to the very top before sunset and found the only spot on the entire mountain not covered in bushes and sat up the marmot.

we ate a lovely dinner on top of this mountain and sat out and watched the sunset until the mosquitoes got too unbearable.

the next day we hitched back into town and met up with the guys who, true to their word, took us atv'ing. omg! we each got our own little killer machine and drove up and down dirt roads. i have hardly ever felt that bad-ass!

we got soooo dirty. here, the thousand-dollar-shot. ohio girls!

we eventually left haines again, but it wasn't before we had tried to figure out every possible way of staying. megan was offered a job as a kayak instructor and we were promissed a trip back into canada to try out horseback riding and dog sledding. we badly wanted to stay. but the road (of the marine highway) called our names. besides, we were to meet megan's friend molly in juneau the following day. so we left and unfortunately never made it back. oh well, maybe next time!