Wyoming

This week my mom came to town. She has some business in Salt Lake City, so she is in the area. Well, at least more than usual, even if she is over an hour away. She flew in Saturday, and I met her at the airport. She stayed the weekend in Morgan, UT, so I drove her up there. Her plane got in about 40 minutes ahead of schedule though, so we had a bit of time to get to Morgan, so I decided to take her for a scenic drive. I learned that she had never been outside the populated valleys in Utah really, so she had not seen some of the beautiful canyons and mountains there are here.

As we left the airport, the most direct route to Morgan would have been to head north to Ogden, and then east over to Morgan. Instead, I decided to take her east, across Salt Lake City, and up Parley's Canyon towards Park City. We took the Interstate 80 around that way to Echo Canyon, where I-84 meets it. At that point, you can get on I-84 west to Morgan, or stay on I-80 east to Wyoming. She made the comment that she had never been to Wyoming. It is only about twenty minutes away from that junction, so we took a little detour to Evanston. She has now been to Wyoming. In Evanston, we turned around, and headed west until we got over to Morgan. It was a nice little drive, and it was nice to have some time with my mom again. I hadn't seen her since April. She is in Salt Lake City all week for business, so I will probably get to see her again before she leaves, on Saturday.

Train Travel

On October 4th, I began the last part of my journey from Anchorage, AK, to Mapleton, UT. The last part would be by train.

I boarded a SoundTransit train in Everett, WA, which took me to Seattle. At King St. Station, I waited for Amtrak. I would be taking the train to Sacramento, and then on to Provo, UT.

I boarded the Coast Starlight in Seattle. I had a roomette on the lower level of one of the Superliner Sleeping Cars. This train operates a first class parlor called the Pacific Parlour. This is unique to the Coast Starlight. The Pacific Parlour came from the Santa Fe Railroad, back when they operated passenger trains, before the creation of Amtrak. It is a Hi-Level car, which was a revolutionary new design for passenger cars that the Santa Fe and Pullman worked on. The Hi-Level cars were the inspiration for the modern Superliner cars, which Amtrak uses today on their western trains.

Early the next morning, we arrived in Sacramento. We actually arrived there over an hour ahead of schedule, so I was not awake yet when we got there. My attendant had warned me the night before that we would probably be there early, as that has been the trend lately. He also said not to panic if we got up and saw that we had arrived. He told us there was no rush, just as long as we were off the train by the time it had to leave, at 6:35am.

In Sacramento, I had a layover of a few hours. I actually wrote my last post on here from the station, and then finished it up on the next train, the California Zephyr. I boarded the California Zephyr around lunch time, and we began heading east towards the Sierra Nevada mountains and Donner Pass. The train climbed up over the pass, and eventually down the to the side to Truckee, CA, and Reno, NV. We crossed Nevada in the middle of the night, and then got to Provo, UT, early the next morning. Tim met me at the train station and from there we drove down to Mapleton, which is only a few minutes away.

Since my arrival Mapleton, I have been looking for a job and a mode of transportation. If anyone has any ideas, let me know!

Travel is Always an Adventure

Long Post Alert: block out the next 3 hours to read this!!

Somehow, whenever I travel, I have a way of having random, unplanned adventures. This trip certainly has not been an exception to that rule! As I write this, I am sitting in the Sacramento Valley Station, waiting to catch another train. This is a beautiful old station. The floors are marble, and the old wooden benches still have the Southern Pacific Lines logo on them. It has a high ceiling with chandeliers hanging above the main concourse. On one end of he concourse there is a large mural of the groundbreaking ceremony for the first transcontinental railroad in the USA, which took place not far from here.

My trip began nearly two weeks ago in Anchorage, AK. At Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, I boarded a rather empty Alaska Airlines 737-800 which ultimately would head to Seattle. This was flight #66, unofficially known as the "Milk Run." this flight had started in Fairbanks, stopped in Anchorage, and after I got on, it also stopped in Cordova, Yakutat, and Juneau, before continuing on to Seattle. Cordova, Yakutat, and Juneau are completely inaccessible by road. You can only fly or sail to those towns. Juneau, being the state capital, does get quite a few commercial flights every day, bit Cordova and Yakutat are both very small. The only flight they get is this milk run. It brings in supplies, packages, and the mail. Basically everything comes into town and leaves on the milk run, unless it's too big. In that case it takes the ferry. When we landed in Cordova, we found that the only stretch of pavement was the runway, and the airport was right in the middle of town. At 7,000 feet, the runway was significantly longer than the entire town! Once we landed we pulled up on a concrete pad. Exiting the plane was by a set of stairs placed near the door, and rather than check people in electronically, they did a head count before we left to make sure everyone was there. The Cordova terminal, as it was labelled, was a garage for the one luggage cart and the pickup truck that pulled it.

When we stopped in Cordova, they immediately unloaded the luggage, packages, and mail. That only took a couple minutes. Several people got off and a couple got on. The mail and their two suitcases were loaded on the plane, and ten minutes after landing, we took off. Now the Cordova airport has no taxiways, so we went out on the runway to taxi. Since we had to start our takeoff roll at one end of the runway, we taxied to one end and then simply made a U turn on the runway and took off. About half an hour later we were in Yakutat, which was slightly larger, but only slightly.

The airport situation in Yakutat was about the same. We stayed a little longer, about 25 minutes, because we loaded over 100 cases of fresh silver salmon bound for San Francisco and Newark, NJ. The terminal was the same size as in cordoba, but there was also a small store at the Yakutat airport. The sign simply said, "food shelter booze." once the fish was all loaded, we taxied to the runway, then down to the end of the runway, then made our U turn and took off. It was about forty minutes to Juneau

Juneau is the third largest city in Alaska and the capital. It is the only state capital in the nation to which you cannot drive. It also has an international airport. I was a little stunned at the airport in Juneau, due to its size. It wasn't large, on the contrary, it was small. There was a terminal, with four gates. Three gates had the moveable jetways, which was nice since it was raining. The other gate was simply a door out to the Tarmac for boarding small propeller planes. There was no security to that gate. Anyone could walk out onto the Tarmac if they wanted. The other three gates had security but it was just one metal detector which you walk through. There was no luggage X-ray machine. There was one baggage claim and one check in counter.

I spent the night in Juneau, right downtown. Now I did not have a lot of time there as I got on the ferry the next morning, but from my perspective it seemed that Juneau consisted primarily of liquor stores, bars, and gift shops, with a few historic or culturally significant buildings thrown in for good measure. There were a couple cruise ships in town when I arrived, and so the liquor stores, bars, and gifts shops were still open, until the ships sailed. All the historical and capital buildings were closed though since it was the evening. I went to bed early since there was not much I was interested in available.

In the morning I got up and took a cab out to the Alaska Marine Highway terminal. There I boarded the FVF Fairweather for Skagway. The Fairweather is a fairly new, fast catamaran ferry which takes both vehicles and passengers. It was headed to Skagway and back, stopping in Haines in both directions. The weather was bad but we were still able to move pretty quickly up Lynn Canal, towards Skagway. The voyage was just over four hours. In Skagway I was supposed to take a bus to Fraser, British Columbia, and there catch the White Pass and Yukon Route back to Skagway. Time was very short so I called the bed and breakfast I was staying at and asked if I could just leave my luggage with them. They were extremely accommodating and then I headed down to he train station.

We started out on the trip up the Klondike highway and over the White Pass. It was raining and at higher elevation, it was snowing. The trouble was as we drove up the highway towards the top of the White Pass, we gained elevation and eventually ran into snow. At first it was not a big deal, but eventually we couldn't to on and bad to turn back. As a result, I did not get to ride the train. After we got back to town, I went and took pictures as the train came into town. The snow had not presented a problem to the railroad, so the train ran anyway. They ended up taking people to Skagway who had originated in Whitehorse but had not been able to get over the pass in a bus either. The train saved the day, although it was still disappointing that I did not get to ride it.

The White Pass and Yukon Route is really the reason Skagway exists at all today. Skagway got started during the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897. They had running water and electricity, even though very few people stayed in town long. People used Skagway as a transfer point. They would arrive on ships, then go by land over the White Pass up to the Yukon river system and the. Boat to Dawson City, where the gold was located. Dawson City is nearly 600 miles from Skagway and was once one of the largest cities in Canada. Most of the stampeders, the people looking for gold, took about a year to get to Dawson City. By 1898, when they were arriving, most of the area already had gold claims staked by those who had lived in the Yukon or nearby Alaska. There was no gold left for the stampeders. As all this was taking place, some business men in Skagway determined that there was money to be made operating a railroad over he White Pass and they formed the White Pass and Yukon Route. They laid a narrow gauge line from Skagway to Whitehorse, about 110 miles. The gold spike was driven in 1900. By then the gold rush was over but Skagway remained an important gateway town to the Yukon and the railroad was able to carry both people and cargo over the pass to Whitehorse. This kept the railroad going, which kept Skagway going. Skagway has not changed a lot since the gold rush. It still has wooden sidewalks and false fronted buildings. Most of the town today is a national historic park. It is very small, just four blocks by 23 blocks. There are no commercial flights to Skagway although there is an air taxi to Juneau. It is one of just three southeast Alaska towns that is on the road system. As you head out of town, the next lanark place is the Canadian border, just 15 miles away. Today the town heavily relies on tourism. Many cruise ships stop there in the summer, but in the winter only four stores stay open. I spent the weekend in Skagway and did a bit of hiking and sightseeing while I was there. The following Monday, I was back on the ferry, heading south.

That Monday I boarded the M/V Malaspina. She was a bigger ship, but also an older one. I was headed for Bellingham, WA on that ferry, and we were scheduled to arrive on Friday morning. After we left Skagway, we stopped again in nearby Haines and then continued south to Juneau, arriving there late Monday night. From there we sailed over to Sitka, which was the capital before Juneau, and it was also the capital of Russia's American territories. That was a very small, but very interesting town. The Russian Orthodox cathedral is located right in he center of the downtown area. There are quite a few little shops and stores, many of which have items imported from Russia. There are also many historic buildings in town, many of which date back to the 1700's. I was able to visit the old bishop's home. The national park service now maintains and restores a lot of these old buildings. Saint Michael's Cathedral is still owned by the Russian Orthodox Church and the occasionally do offer tours, although that was not available while I was in town.

As the ferry sailed from Sitka, we retraced some of our route and then continued south. In the darkness hours of Wednesday morning, we stopped in the towns of Petersburg and Wrangell. They are both very small places. Later that day we stopped in Ketchikan. Ketchikan was very rainy and rather dreary. That is another town which is heavily supported by tourism and cruise ships. Since no cruise ship was in town, it was very quiet and very little was open.

Thursday ended up being a beautiful day and we spent it at sea, I'm the coastal waters of British Columbia. The voyage spent very little time at sea, because we were able to stay in more protected and calmer waters which were more inland. I am actually tracked the whole voyage with GPS, I'll post maps in the near future, indicating where we sailed.

Since I had the whole day at sea, and the weather was beautiful, I found myself a chair and dragged that out to the stern and spent most of the day out there. I also decided to get to know the ship a little. The M/V Malaspina is known as the "First Lady of the Fleet." She was built in 1963, and her replacement, the M/V Kennicott was built in the late 1990's. Oddly enough, the Kennicott gets tied up for the winter and the Malaspina runs year round, even after 47 years in service. There are no plans for retirement either. She was the first of the Alaska ferries and is one of the larger ships in the fleet. There is a plaque on one deck honoring the captain and crew for their service rescuing people from a burning ship in the Georgia Strait. Because of her efforts there were no fatalities on the ship that burned. It was very interesting learning snout he ship and spending a day at sea.

Friday morning found me arriving at the Alaska ferry terminal in Bellingham. We arrived right on time. I spent the weekend in Bellingham. On Saturday we decided to go to Victoria, BC. I did not know much about how to get there, but I knew we would need to take a ferry. We drove to Tsawwassen, where we caught one of the BC ferries to Swartz Bay. Not knowing exactly where the ferry went, I figured Swartz Bay was the bay the ferry terminal was in for Victoria. As it turned out, that was about 40 minutes away from downtown Victoria, and we were unable to get to Victoria due to no planning ahead. We got some dinner, and then got back on the ferry. Despite not going to Victoria, it was a beautiful day and just perfect for three hours on a ferry. It was a great day on the water.

At this point I am on the train. I'll write about that more when that let of the trip ends, seeing as this post is already eternally long!

Summer 2010

These are the totals for the entire 2010 tour season in Alaska. This summarizes what I did during the summer. This is just me, not the entire division or motor coach fleet.

Miles Driven: 17,474

Passengers Carried: 5,589

Hours Driving: 515.5

Hours Worked: 1,093.25

Average Speed: 33.90 mph

Percentage Driving: 47.2%

Average Hours/Day: 8.75

Days Worked: 125

Incidents/Accidents: 1

Passenger Miles: 97,662,186

2009 Passenger Miles: 139,433,724

September 2010 Statistics

Miles Driven: 1,928
Passengers Carried: 816
Hours Driving: 57.5
Hours Worked: 130
Average Speed: 33.5 mph
Percentage Driving: 44.2%
Average Hours/Day: 7.65
Days Worked: 17
Incidents/Accidents: 0

September was our shortest month with the last cruise ship sailing out on the 18th, for Asia. Once that ship, the Diamond Princess sailed, things got very quiet. It was a little strange at first actually. That is the reason for the lower numbers though.