Alaska without the Cruise Ship Part 7: Exploring Juneau

by Neil Woodburn on

Alaska without the Cruise Ship is a 17-part series exploring the ease and advantages of touring Alaska on your own steam and at your own speed.

The second destination on our self-proclaimed Alaskan Land Cruise was the city of Juneau.

Juneau is the third largest metropolis in Alaska and is also the state capital, despite that it is completely unreachable by road–a fact that every local seemed proud to point out to us throughout our stay.

That means there are only two ways to get to Juneau; by air or by sea.

Most tourists simply go to sleep on their cruise ship and find themselves docked the next morning. Since my friends and I were enjoying Alaska sans cruise ship, however, we had to pick between Alaska Airlines or the Alaska Marine Highway.

The Marine Highway is a 3,500 mile-long network of ferries which stretch from Bellingham, Washington all the way to Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands. The route is traveled by 350,000 passengers annually and is part of the federal National Highway System.

If I had more time to tour Alaska, this would be my route of choice. I would rent a car and load it up on a ferry every time the road failed to connect to the next town. Ferry travel can be slow, however, and since my friends and I did not have the luxury of time, we passed on the 18-hour ferry ride from Ketchikan to Juneau ($108) and opted instead for the $150, one-hour flight.

Like so many Alaskan communities, downtown Juneau is tucked between the ocean and a large mountain. The most immediate way to enjoy the town is to take the Mt. Roberts Tramway 1800 feet straight up the side of the mountain. The $23.95 charge is a little pricey but was worth it for the comedic factor alone; a teenage guide in the tram car who painfully droned on about Juneau and the building of the tram in an emotionless, clearly rote-memorized speech. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or throw myself out the window.

The top of Mt. Roberts is quite beautiful. A number of trails crisscross the heavily forested mountaintop and some even lead back down to town for those looking for some exercise (or simply to avoid a return trip with the boring tour guide). For the more sedentary, a restaurant, 120-seat theater, and a gift shop provide enough entertainment to make the tram journey worthwhile.

The real draw, however, is the spectacular view–or so I was told. The cloud layer was thick and misty and visibility was limited to gawking at the cruise ships docked far below. And what amazing ships! I count five pools and one miniature golf course on that behemoth above.

After our aerial introduction to the town, we spent most of our first afternoon wandering around. Juneau grew out of a gold rush in the late 1800s and much of this prosperity can still be seen, especially among the old wooden structures on South Franklin; such as the Red Dog Saloon, and the Alaskan Hotel and Bar (which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places).

Juneau is still a big city, however, and as a result, tends to lack the small-town charm of a place like Ketchikan. Perhaps my opinion was dampened by the fact that five cruise ships were docked for most of our stay there. Tourists were busting out of every shop, restaurant, and gift store within walking distance of their ships. Sure, I was a tourist as well, but part of the reason I opted out of the cruise ship route was to avoid the very crowds which usually accompany them.

If you really want to plan your trip to avoid this, simply call up the local tourist office. Cruise ship dockings are known well in advance and calendars with this information are distributed to local businesses to gauge staffing for the ebbs and flows.

Planning around the cruise ship dockings also ensures that various excursions won’t be sold out when you’re in town. The excursions are, after all, the reason why most people visit Juneau. The real joy of the state capital is that it serves as a convenient base for phenomenal attractions just outside the city limits–some of which I will be writing about in the next few days. This is because Juneau sits in the middle of the 17-million acre Tongass National Forest–the largest temperate rainforest in the United States and Canada. The city has more miles of hiking trials (262.2) than paved roadways (41) and is also blessed with a very impressive 1,500 square miles of glaciers in the Juneau Icefield.

How many state capitals can claim that!

Yesterday: The Tasty Food of Ketchikan
Tomorrow: Juneau’s Mendenhall Glacier

Alaska without the Cruise Ship Part 6: The Tasty Food of Ketchikan

by Neil Woodburn on

Alaska without the Cruise Ship is a 17-part series exploring the ease and advantages of touring Alaska on your own steam and at your own speed.

There is really only one thing on the menu in Alaska: seafood. There are hot dogs and hamburgers and steaks, of course, but no one should travel all the way to Alaska to eat the same slop they can have at home.

Most of the people who travel to Alaska have access to local seafood on their cruise ship’s all-you-can-eat buffet. Now, I love gorging myself as much as the next person, but one of the true joys of traveling Alaska on your own is having the leisure to dine in local restaurants and indulge in the fine cuisine–most of which seems to have been plucked out of the ocean that very morning.

Ketchikan certainly has its share of tasty restaurants and cool bars that are not only delicious, but blanketed in Alaskan ambience one simply cannot find on a 5,000 person ship. The following are some of the favorites we discovered during our stay in this fine town.

Annabelle’s Famous Keg and Chowder House
This restaurant/saloon has an old wooden interior that sucks you back in time to the turn of the century. The bar itself, located in the historic 1927 Gilmore Hotel, is something right out of an old western and I half expected to see a pair of swinging doors at the entrance. Oddly enough, it also evokes the ambiance of an East Coast mob haunt as though these two schools of architecture had combined in some strange Alaskan mélange whose byproduct proved far homier.

The menu is primarily pub food but with a tasty seafood twist. I tried out the $13.50 halibut cheek BLT on my first day in Ketchikan and loved the way the bacon nicely complimented the delicious fish. The second time I visited I opted for the breaded, stuffed shrimp. Although it too was quite nice, I was slightly disappointed by the heavy grease factor which accompanied it; the portions were huge and I felt like I had downed a glass of cooking oil by the time I finished.

Dessert, on the other hand, counteracted the grease and sent me spinning off into culinary nirvana. Although Annabelle’s famous peanut butter pie was probably even worse for my heart than the breaded shrimp, this creamy, rich concoction was finger-lickin’ good and I couldn’t hold back. We only ordered one for the table but everyone quickly fought over it after taking the first bite.

Heen Kahidi Dining Room, Cape Fox Lodge
Certainly the classiest, most expensive, and best tasting restaurant in all of Ketchikan is the Heen Kahidi Dining Room at Cape Fox Lodge.

The elegant décor and quality service were superb enough that the restaurant would be right at home in any metropolis in the lower 48; the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the vast Alaskan landscape and the Tongass Narrows, however, simply can’t be found anywhere else.

Restaurants with views are notorious for bad food but the Heen Kahidi Dining Room was certainly an exception. My baked brie and crab dip appetizer was delicious and my halibut gruyere entrée even better. There is something orgiastic about eating seafood so very fresh that it flakes lightly onto your fork and then infuses your mouth with subtle, imbued flavors. Prices are not cheap, however. Steak and fish entrees range from $20-30. But let me tell you, it’s well worth it.

One afternoon I had the opportunity to meet the chef, who was conducting a private cooking session. He walked us through the recipe for the restaurant’s famous seafood chowder-a creamy concoction plump with halibut, salmon, clams, scallops, potatoes, bacon, onions, and a mishmash of other tasty morsels and spices. Chef, as everyone called him, told us that the restaurant makes 10 gallons a day of the seafood chowder and serves 300 pounds of halibut a week. Something else I learned about Chef is that he had recently lost about 100 pounds on very unique diet: nothing but salmon. Track him down if you visit Ketchikan and learn his secret; it could very well be the next hot diet fad.

Steamers on the Dock
Steamers, as the name suggests, is located on the dock and, like Cape Fox lodge, also offers some very nice views and delicious seafood. The ambience here, however, is very different than both Cape Fox lodge and Annabelle’s. Steamers is more of an airy, brew pub with a festive atmosphere and an outgoing personality. This is the place to go with a large raucous group.

The menu is mostly fish (naturally) and steaks with a large selection of microbrews to wash it all down. We opted for the shellfish this time and sat back in awe as large metal buckets of crab legs were delivered to our table. It seemed that every type of crab leg imaginable was stuff into these buckets, legs jutting out all askew and looking frighteningly like something out of Aliens. I’ve never been a huge fan of shellfish because of the logistics required to actually get to the meat hidden inside, but all the cracking and prying was worth it at Steamers. The crab meat, when I finally got to it, was excellent! It was fresh, buttery and practically melted in my mouth.

No website: 76 Front Street, 907/225-1600

That One Place
My favorite, low-key restaurant in Ketchikan is That One Place. Or, is it The Other Place? Located just south of the former red light district on the first floor of the New York Hotel, this is one of the more uniquely named restaurants I’ve ever come across. During the day, it is simply called That One Place. But on weekend nights, it changes its name to The Other Place.

The café, in one incarnation or another, has been serving food and drink for 100 years now. Today, it offers a great selection of cheap sandwiches, tapas, and Mexican food for $5-10. The café also has a nice range of coffees and specialty drinks. Naturally, I scoured the menu for fish and ended up wolfing down a couple of outstanding halibut tacos. It was at this point I think I realized I had eaten halibut nearly every meal since landing in Alaska. And, I wasn’t even close to getting tired of it.

Fat Stan’s
Lastly, I have to mention a little bar I wandered across late one evening. Fat Stan’s only has about ten chairs and is actually part of a wine store. It was full of friendly locals when I showed up, many of whom had just finished their shift at the nearby Lumberjack Show. The specialty here is wine but they do have some beers on tap as well.

For the more adventurous bar seekers, I would recommend wandering along Main Street and popping into some of the less savory watering holes found there. One of the locals told me that just a block away on Main Street was a notorious bar where John Wayne used to come to drink and beat up hippies in the 1960s. I could just imagine the Duke dragging them out into the lonely streets of Ketchikan and roughing them up a bit before going back in to finish his whisky.

Don’t you just love Alaska?

Yesterday: The Eagles and Salmon of Ketchikan
Tomorrow: Exploring Juneau

Alaska without the Cruise Ship Part 5: The Eagles and Salmon of Ketchikan

by Neil Woodburn on

Alaska without the Cruise Ship is a 17-part series exploring the ease and advantages of touring Alaska on your own steam and at your own speed.

With all the cool things we had planned for Ketchikan, the one I initially thought would be the most boring actually turned out to be one of the most fascinating.

The Deer Mountain Tribal Hatchery and Eagle Center is just a short walk from the center of town. All one needs to do to find the place is to follow Ketchikan Creek. This was the same creek that mesmerized me on my first day in town as I stood in awe at the sight of hundreds of salmon choking the waters as they fought their way upstream.

The salmon enter the creek from Tongass Narrows, swim past the old red light district, round a bend in the river, and then come across a gate of wooden poles stretched across the river a short distance later. The fish thrash around furiously looking for a narrow opening to squeeze through, but the poles are packed tightly and there is only one route they can take; a narrow channel which shoots off from the main river and disappears into the Hatchery Center.

The human entrance is around the corner and costs just $5 to get in. The first section, however, doesn’t focus on Alaska’s most famous fish, but rather on one of the predators which eats them. The Deer Mountain Eagle Center is home to two bald eagles which had been injured and rehabilitated back to health, but are unable to survive reintroduction into the wild.

The center has built a nice little natural habitat for the eagles to enjoy. A small, Zen-like creek runs through the middle and is populated by a couple of unlucky salmon biding their time.

The eagles sit just a few feet away from the paying customers. Although I had already seen many bald eagles during my first few days in Alaska, this was my first opportunity to see them up close. And oh man are they spectacular! I never realized just how big these creatures truly are or how magnificent. What really blew me away was their piercing eyes. No photograph or nature documentary can even come close to the feeling which came over me when one of the eagles cocked his head and looked me straight in the eye. I was hit with an empowering oneness with nature that exuded strength, intelligence, and soul. Were I a field mouse, I simply would have frozen in place and been consumed on the spot.

An Alaskan native tour guide joined us in the Eagle Center and then walked us through a door to the hatchery center just outside.

Depending upon your perspective, the hatchery is either a gory spectacle of death, or a glorious example of rebirth.

In the space of just a few hundred square feet, one can witness the entire life cycle of the salmon. After swimming into the hatchery, the salmon are kept in concrete holding tanks until their roe can be removed. This was the job of the fellow in the photo above. Armed with nothing more than a knife, we watched him expertly dispatch about a salmon a minute, shear off its head, slice its belly open, and pull out the roe. It is an unceremonious end to the long upstream journey the poor critter had to endure to get here.

The roe are incubated and then place in increasingly larger holding tanks as the eggs hatch and the fish grow. If you look closely, you can see thousands of tiny salmon swimming in poetic circles around and around and around. When the fish get large enough, the hatchery releases more than 135 million of them back into the river every May where they will then make their way out to sea. In five years or so they will return, thrashing and jumping their way up river until they complete the circle, finally make it back to the hatchery where they were born and the trusty knife of the fellow above.

Those who aren’t so lucky are plucked from the ocean much earlier and served up with a slice of lemon and a bit of rice pilaf.

Yesterday: Rope Courses and Zip Lines in Ketchikan
Tomorrow: The Tasty Food of Ketchikan

Alaska without the Cruise Ship Part 4: Rope Courses and Zip Lines in Ketchikan

by Neil Woodburn on

Alaska without the Cruise Ship is a 17-part series exploring the ease and advantages of touring Alaska on your own steam and at your own speed.

On our third day in Ketchikan, Alaska my friends and I decided to opt for one of the many “soft adventure” excursions so very popular at cruise ship ports along the coast.

Although we were not traveling by cruise ship, independent travelers can easily take advantage of all the wonderful adventure companies which have sprung up to cater to the cruise industry. Most companies set up kiosks or representatives at the dock to great departing passengers and whisk them away to fjords, rivers, forest canopies, or wherever else their adventure may lie.

The best thing about organizing such trips yourself is that the prices are often lower than those paid in advance on the cruise ship. In addition, one can call ahead and take advantage of the lull times when the ships are not in dock and the excursion might just be you and your buddies.

This was the case when we went kayaking with Southeast Sea Kayaks the day before. Things were a little different on our second adventure, however, as a bus full of cruise ship passengers arrived at Southeast Exposure Outdoor Adventure Center the same time as we did.

The center is located in a heavily wooded area just north of Ketchikan near Knudson Cove Marina. Although the majority of tourists come here for the fine kayaking, we had made the 20-minute journey to play around on the “Rainforest Ropes and Zip Challenge.”

The course was a series of ropes and bridges and zip lines built directly into forest canopy. This might sound scary but the challenges ranged from eight feet off the ground to about twenty. And, we were given helmets, harnesses, and a lengthy safety briefing before venturing treewards. It would actually be rather difficult to find a way to kill or even hurt yourself on this course. And yet, there were still a few people who chickened out.

For the most part, the course was a lesson in balance. Personally, the most challenging part for me was the very first obstacle (above) which featured a log suspended by two ropes. The log swung widely with each step-unless you took it very slow and zen-like. A safety line above provided most people the stability required to make it across; but this was cheating in my opinion.

The remainder of the course consisted of various rope contraptions that required various degrees of balance and stamina to navigate across. The true challenge was doing so without grasping onto the metal cable which always tethered your safety harness to some type of safety line.

The reward for making it across each challenge was a zip line. The zips were a little too short to really be considered scary but they were fun nonetheless. Squeals of delight echoed throughout the forest every time someone launched their way down one of them.

Oh, and I should point out that a crew member was present at the start and finish of each zip line to ensure no one slammed into a tree or failed to hook in properly. As it turned out, we had only one accident. One of my friends managed to drop her camera from one of the highest points of the course. The ground where it landed was so cushioned with brush and pine needles and heavy growth, however, that the camera was not damaged at all.

We finished our day at the Adventure Center with a few summits of their climbing wall. Helmets and safety harnesses were slapped back on and each of us worked our way up the wall using a variety of handholds and routes.

Climbers can pick the degree of difficulty by climbing different parts of the wall or only using specifically colored handholds. You can rest assured that your fearless Gadling writer (below) chose the most dangerous, never-before-conquered route, setting a new standard that all future climbers can only aspire towards. Or not.

Yesterday: Things to do on the Water in Ketchikan
Tomorrow: The Eagles and Salmon of Ketchikan

Alaska without the Cruise Ship Part 3: Things to do on the Water in Ketchikan

by Neil Woodburn on

Alaska without the Cruise Ship is a 17-part series exploring the ease and advantages of touring Alaska on your own steam and at your own speed.

So much of Alaska revolves around the waterways which surround it.

My second day in Ketchikan involved two separate trips on the water; one on a rather large catamaran and one in a rather tiny kayak.

The catamaran was part of the Allen Marine Tours fleet and served as our transport for a four-hour tour of Misty Fjords National Monument.

The harbor, like everything else in Ketchikan, was walking distance from our hotel and early one morning we found ourselves sipping coffee on board the catamaran with about 100 other passengers–most of whom had just disembarked from a cruise ship parked nearby.

Ketchikan, although a port town, is not located on the sea itself but rather along the Tongass Narrows, a ½ mile wide channel of sea water that slips between Gravina Island and Revillagigedo Island (where Ketchikan is located).

Our four-hour, $149 catamaran tour would take us southeast along the narrows past forested mountains and green rolling hills. The first hour was rather uneventful and my friends and I sat downstairs as a friendly naturalist droned on about the history of Alaska or something along those lines. She wasn’t boring; it’s just that the 8 a.m. departure time was a wee bit early to be tuning in at this point.

It wasn’t long, however, before we gravitated upstairs to the observation deck to watch New Eddystone Rock come into view. This massive volcanic spire bursts from the sea with a rugged, prehistoric attitude. It would have been great to get off the boat and wander around the beach as though shipwrecked. But, we had a schedule to keep.

Shortly afterwards, we came to Behm Canal and the Misty Fjords National Monument. Although the entire park is 2.3 million acres large and blessed with outstanding natural beauty in every form, its outstanding fjords are most certainly the park’s crown jewel.

A fjord, by definition, is a valley that has been created by a retreating glacier and then filled in by the ocean. As you can see in the following photos, this often leaves very shear cliffs extending thousands of feet straight upwards.

Spruce, cedar, and hemlock trees cling tightly to the granite walls, while amazingly white waterfalls cascade down their front. As if this wasn’t all perfect enough, dozens of bald eagles could be seen resting in trees and floating peacefully above the tranquil waters.

The Misty Fjords are properly named–at least while we were there. The highest points of the fjords were often enshrouded in fog and mist, lending a surreal, almost Middle Earth feeling to the place. But it was never eerie, like fog so often is. No, this blissful sanctuary of nature, was peaceful and relaxing, and just the perfect medicine to flush the big city out of me.

It would have been mind-blowing to have kayaked through the fjords, slicing silently though the waters while 3,000 feet of granite loomed above. Our kayak trip, however, was slightly more urban in nature.

Southeast Sea Kayaks operates a number of guided tours but ours left from a small set of docks just north of downtown Ketchikan and the cruise ship docks. Our guide, a friendly guy by the name of Mike, saddled us up with gear, gave us a few paddling lessons, and then warned us about crossing the Tongass Narrows.

The Tongass Narrows is the superhighway of Ketchikan. In addition to fishing boats and cruise ships plying its waters, it is also the landing strip for float planes. Crossing it in a kayak is like a bizarre game of Frogger where one has to time the speed of massive cruise ships and tiny prop planes. The current was a bit strong as well and we had to angle our kayaks about 15 degrees left of where we were heading. Things got easier once we pulled up next to Pennock Island, however, and the current subsided. From there we leisurely paddled along the shoreline.

I had been hoping to witness some marine life, but the Tongass Narrows are simply too busy for whales and sea lions to hang around. This was not the iceberg filled adventure that comes to mind when one mentions Alaskan kayaking, but it was a great introduction for those who may have never done this type of thing before and it felt great to get out on the water and slowly circle our way past the island. Next time I return, however, I will certainly opt for Southeast Sea Kayaks’ Orcas Cove or Misty Fjords trip. Both require a boat ride to the destination and then a full day of paddling far from the busy waterways of Tongass Narrows.

Yesterday: Quaint Ketchikan
Tomorrow: Rope Courses and Zip Lines in Ketchikan