Hitting the Pavement: A Laundry List of Ferry Troubles

We arrived at the ferry terminal and was greeted by a rare sight. The sun was out and while lined up for boarding we had the tent on top of the car trying to dry it some. We saw a few familiar faces. Janice and her husband, The New Old Time Chautauqua and a couple from the Sitka hostel, Brandon and Abby.

We road the Chenga back to Juno, Alaska Ferry's high speed ferry. We hung out with Brandon and Abby for the whole ferry ride and played a card game called golf and a couple of rounds of Boss monster (my newest board game).

The ferry seemed to take no time at all. Ideally we were supposed to hop onto the Colombia in Juno and only loose a day out of our scheduled itinerary in Wrangell but by the time we got into port the staff announced the the Colombia still wasn't ready to go anywhere. Brandon and Abby let us on to some good news though, they had a hotel room with an extra double bed that they offered to us and we decided to take them up on it.

After exchanging phone numbers Amy and I set off to explore Juno for a second time. Most of the sights were already closed for the evening but we had tasty Indian food for dinner at Saffron and it was absolutely delicious.

Cozy little table at Saffron

After dinner we found out that the hotel Abby and Brandon were staying in (The Alaskan Hotel Bar) was really close to Saffron. We called them from the lobby and went to the most interesting looking hotel room I have ever seen. The whole hotel was interesting. It used to be a old bordello and every floor had a different design of wallpaper (one was even velvet). The room we stayed in had a set of stairs in the middle of the room and one bed was on top of the stairs almost like a bunk bed. Not really sure what the original purpose of the room was but the building had clearly been renovated many times over generations and was apparently haunted.

A quick trip to the liquor store across the street got me some beer and Amy some wine. Both Amy and I had lots of fun staying up way to late chatting with Brandon and Abby.

We checked out early in the morning. We drove Abby and Brandon to the ferry terminal to catch their sailing to Gustavus. We found that the Colombia still wasn't going anywhere. They did allow us on the boat and gave us meal vouchers, which was nice. We only ended up being on the boat for six or seven hours until we found out that we were getting moved to the Matanuska ferry.

Ghostly mountains

Exploring the Matanuska

We set up camp in a lounge near the middle of the boat. The boat didn't seem as well laid out as the Columbia but at least it was moving. We ended up watching some tv shows and then settled to sleep (snagging some valuable couch space). The awakening in the morning wasn't very nice. Someone decided to banging on the piano in the lounge at 6:30 am. Well we were up and about.

None of the movies seemed to interest us so we headed to the front lounge and started a 1000 piece puzzle. It was an all day commitment.

Keeping busy on the ferry with a 1000 piece puzzle

The finished product, six hours later

Our original itinerary had us stopping two nights in Wrangell and and two nights in Ketchikan but with all the alterations and delays we ended up just sailing straight through which was a little disappointing. After finally finishing the puzzle we retreated back to the mid lounge, watched some tv, I played some games and than bed for the second night on the ferry.