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Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada to Sitka, Alaska, United States Vancouver Highway 99 to the BC Ferries. BC Ferries to Vancouver Island Highway 19 to BC Ferries. BC Ferries to Prince Rupert, British Columbia. Alaska Marine Highway to Sitka, Alaska. (Note: At this point van and van occupants, including Gracie the cat, part ways). Occupants to Sitka on Alaska Airlines. Van to Sitka via Petersburg on Alaska Marine Highway). (1500 miles) The lights went out in Vancouver on Friday, December 15. This would not normally have been a problem except this was the day we were moving out of 2010 Ferndale Street, the sunny garden apartment we had lived in for the past sixteen months. Our son, Isaac was born here, in the bedroom, midwives attending, in May of this year. Gracie the cat liked the East Van neighborhood, having made both friends and foes among the numerous feline personalities. We rented the one-bedroom apartment from folks who quickly became friends, Dyan and Paulis.
The lights went out the day after Phil successfully defended his thesis at the University of British Columbia. So successfully that the changes needed before officially submitting it were minor and could be made before we left. We were also committed to a dozen or so errands that day, including cleaning the apartment as it was to be turned over to a new tenent in a matter of hours. That morning Vancouver was reeling from the effects of a powerful windstorm overnight which had caused impressive damage, wrenching enormous trees out from between the city sidewalks. Around the corner a car had been completely flattened. After a flurry of a day we were the last vehicle to make it on board the seven o’clock ferry out of Horseshoe Bay, British Columbia. An hour and thirty minutes later, we were off-loading onto Vancouver Island, a snowy two-hour drive north along the Sunshine Coast awaiting us. Slipping and sliding our way into a roadside hotel for the night brought the day to a close. The sign reads, if we are able to make it down for breakfast prior to 8:00am, we will be rewarded with half-price breakfast. Ham and eggs for $3.50!
It snowed all night, and a frozen dusty white van awaited us in the morning. Some children poked their heads out of their hotel room and commented how cool the van looked. I would agree at the time, although after the treacherously snowy, icy, and hilly bit of driving the van would put us through that day Westy’s reputation fell into question. Actually, it was our all-weather radials that would let us down and would at one point cause us to swerve into the on-coming lane, though we guided ourselves to a slow stop just short of the barrier. Having persevered hours of white-knuckle driving conditions, we arrived in Port Hardy to find out the BC Ferry departure was delayed until the next afternoon. We collapsed at a motel and the next day finally boarded the BC Ferries vessel at Port Hardy, bound for Prince Rupert, where we would connect to an Alaska Marine Highway ferry to Sitka, Alaska just two days later.
The ferry to Prince Rupert was jam packed with those like us, who were looking forward to our poor man ’s cruise through Alaska’s Inside Passage. As evening approached and we began to cordon off an area on the floor of the ferry for the night, a woman approached us with an offer of her stateroom, as she was getting off early. We gratefully accepted and with the purser’s permission, moved in. We awoke the next morning from an excellent night’s sleep in our berth, to find that the boat had barely moved overnight. The ferry sat for the next several hours until daylight, when the ship’s captain would finally be able to bring it into Klemtu. The gift of a stateroom was greatly appreciated while we waited out the stormy weather. The delay however, saw us arriving in Prince Rupert more than twelve hours late, missing our Alaska Ferry connection to Sitka.
We spent the next four days at the Red Rooster Roadhouse in Prince Rupert awaiting the arrival of the next Alaska ferry. We met a young French family at the hostel, whose five-year old daughter was infatuated with Isaac. “Bebe, bebe, she would call out before bed.” He wasn’t sure what to make of all the attention. While stranded, Phil graded final papers, Maria wrote, and Isaac began letting on that crawling would be his next developmental endeavor. We enjoyed conversation with both visitors and permenment residents of the Red Rooster Roadhouse, we cooked our meals, and we trapsed around Prince Rupert taking in the sights of the growing fishing-come-port industrial town, and of course sampled the local fare. One particular restaurant featured full menus for each of four cuisines: Italian, Greek, Thai, and Mexican! Finally leaving Prince Rupert on Friday we would take the ferry to Ketchikan, and then fly to Sitka in order to make it for Christmas. The van stayed on the ferry until Petersburg, where a generous colleague of Maria’s mom took it off and kept it at her house until it could be put back on a ferry that stopped in Sitka. Westy arrived safely in Sitka on the 27th.
After this eventful travel, we were grateful to spend the next three weeks relaxing with Mom and Dad in Sitka (and Han for a few days until she returned to Boston). Sitka in January is dark, with only about six hours of daylight. This year offered an unusual amount of snow, which made the landscape even more gorgeous. We spent lots of time gazing out at the ocean and Mt. Edgecumbe, the dormant volcano that dominates the view from 3601 Halibut Point Road. We introduced Gracie to her Sitka cousins, with whom she would spend the next eight months. We all enjoyed showing off Isaac, and playing with an increasingly independent baby. In his usual methodical way, Isaac kept plugging away each day at a new step towards crawling, which we declared that he had achieved in early January. By the time we left he was fully mobile… Watch out everyone! |
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Last updated 5/06