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Real Time Message - Dec. 29, 2007

Due to long days of traveling and the lack of internet access my blogs to finish Alaska/Yukon have been slow as of late.
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Strategizing in Skagway

As I drove into Skagway, the Garden City of Alaska, I was still undecided as to which route I would follow to get back home to Prince George, BC.

My minimal scenario would have been to take a short voyage from Skagway to Juneau in order to experience the Alaska Marine Highway, also known as the Alaska Ferry. From there I would return to Skagway and then drive back to British Columbia by the same route I had followed in coming here - The Alaska Highway.

My optimal scenario would have been to take the Alaska Marine Highway and string together a series of ferry rides south . This would include some overnight stops in the archipelago of the Alaskan panhandle. The end result would be that I would disembark from the ferry at Prince Rupert and have a relatively short 9 hour drive back to Prince George.

The deciding factors would be the price and the ferry schedule. As I approached the ferry terminal in Skagway, neither of these two vital pieces of information were in my possession.

Since optimal is preferable to minimal, my first order of business upon arriving in Skagway was to visit the Alaska Ferry Terminal, with the hope of stringing together an optimal scenario.

A good sign was the accumulation of passengers around the ferry terminal and the traffic in the parking lot.

The other caveat that would guide my route home would be some degree of cost effectiveness.

I had decided in advance that I would not pay more than $550 for the three day ferry ride from Skagway to Prince George with stops in between .

It was with a degree of excitement that I reacted to the news that the next ferry was leaving in one hour for Juneau. Not bad for spur of the moment planning, if one can call it that.

The question now became - could a voyage be put together with stops in between which would allow me to see some of the towns in the Alaskan archipelago which were of interest to me?

Other than Juneau, I wish I could have seen Sitka and Petersburg because of their Russian connection, as well as Ketchikan.

The Alaska ferry agent was quite helpful in exploring the various scenarios.

The end result was an itinerary that would have me leaving in one hour for Juneau (Friday).

The next ferry south from Juneau would leave on 01:00 Tuesday morning which would leave me with 3 full days, more than enough, in Juneau .

From Juneau I would take a ferry to Ketchikan. An overnight stop in Sitka would have added 5 more days to the trip which was out of the question. The ferry however, had a 3 hours stop in Sitka and that would just be enough to squeeze in a quick group taxi visit to the Old Russian colonial capital.

I would arrive in Sitka around noon on Tuesday and leave again around 15:00.

From Sitka the ferry would continue till next day around noon when it would arrive in Ketchikan.

At this point, I would have to change ferries as the Malaspina was headed for Bellingham, Washington and would not stop in Prince Rupert.

At 18:00, I would be leaving from Ketchikan only to arrive in Prince Rupert at 06:00 Thursday morning.

This was certainly an interesting scenario. What better way to finish a grand Alaskan tour than with the Alaskan ferry on the Alaska Marine Highway which is designated as a Scenic Byway . Besides, this would be the next best thing to an Alaskan cruise, notwithstanding the fact that I would be missing the best part - scenic Glacier Bay.

Well that left only one question. How much would the voyage cost? The answer of $550 was music to my ears. That was within my acceptable price range.

I also calculated - no - calculated would be the wrong word since I did not have enough time to get the necessary figures. I estimated that I would save about $200 in gas by reducing my road trip from 2 to 3 days to 1 day.

Now that I have the time, here are the real calculations:

- distance from Skagway to Prince George 2,033 kilometers.
- mileage 8 litres per 100 km
- cost per liter $1.15
- number of litres 163 used
- 163 liters x $1.15 = $187

Less:

Cost of trip from Prince Rupert to Prince George

Distance from Prince Rupert to Prince George 760 kilometres

- mileage 8 litres per 100 km
- cost per litre $1 .15
- number of litres used - 60
- cost 60 x $1.15 = $ 69

Savings on gas $187 - $69 = $118

Cost of ferry $550
Less savings on gas $118
$432

That brought the price of the ferry for me and my Volvo down to $432 for basically a three day ferry ride - without having to do a lot more driving. At this point, I had driven about 5,000 km and a break in driving was not all that hard to take.

In the final analysis, the die was cast, as I decided to return home via the Alaska Marine Highway.

That left me with only one problem - what about Skagway?

With the ferry leaving in one hour, I had about 40 minutes to drive back into nearby downtown Skagway to give the main street a once-over.

It was not my first choice, but I didn't want to wait 2 days in Skagway for the next ferry south .

Trying to make the best of a bad situation, I scrambled to get back into this historic town and take as many photos as I could in the limited time that I had.

As the last cruise ship for the season had sailed off about three days ago, Skagway had taken on its survival mode. Also gone were the hordes of summer work permit students from Eastern Europe. They come here, as well as other tourist areas around the U.S., to provide the manual labour for the grunt jobs of the tourist industry.

One thing was for sure, a lot of money had poured into this spiffy little town which is such an integral part of the cruise ship circuit.

The numerous parked tour buses are used to transport cruise ship passengers to the local White Pass Yukon Route railway station. From here the train goes on the scenic route over White Pass to Whitehorse.

The main street of Skagway which lay so dormant now will react next spring to the arrival of the first cruise ship the way a junkie is invigorated by the next fix .

There is a well oiled symbiotic relationship between the tourists and the cruise lines such as of Princess, Norwegian, Celebrity and the half dozen other companies which have developed cruising and touring into a fine art.

It is free enterprise at its best.

Is there a downside? If there is, I can't think of it. Tourism is vital to Alaska and Yukon since it is the main non-resource based industry.

Tourism is a valuable resource that is environmentally friendly and renewable. While it is omnipresent here and in other parts of Alaska and Yukon, it gratefully lacks a sordid or tacky side that one finds associated with tourism in some other parts of the world. It is all done with a certain amount of class,

Some Skagway Facts

- population 862
- visits by tourists in a season, 800,000
- located at the northern end of the Inside Passage
- 100 miles north of Juneau
- 110 miles south of Whitehorse, Yukon
- known as the Garden City of Alaska for its beautiful flower and vegetable gardens
- touted as a great place to shop as there are many stores along Broadway Street
- stores are housed in beautiful gold rush style of buildings complete with wooden sidewalks

Like Dawson City, Skagway is a beautiful place to visit along the Yukon Gold Rush Trail .

Coming Soon: Juneau - The Unique State Capital