Stage 1: Let’s get started: Seattle- Bellingham – Ketchikan – Juneau – Yakutat – Whittier: Keep the flow

The start of such a trip is always delayed for several times. There’s always something to do … as readjusting the gear on the motorcycle, clean up the apartment (yes! I don’t want to come back in a too big mess), get missing stuff, which you’re sure you really have to have otherwise you might get lost in the wilderness. Well, at a certain point you just have to go. A booked ferry ticket is a good argument not to reschedule the whole trip and so I jump on my bike to get off …and to land in the amazing weekend traffic of Seattle which costs me some time.

But as I didn’t plan to go the direct way to Bellingham, the ferry terminal to Alaska, I still have some buffer left which I finally can use to go some nice detours along the mountains and hidden lakes, I’ve never been to, although I thought I travelled the Seattle surroundings often enough. What a great start!
At the ferry terminal I’m one of two motorcyclists only. This is completely surprising to me as the short period of two months each year is the only opportunity to travel Alaska on a motorcycle, so each ferry should be crowded by motorcyclists. But finally this small number of two-wheelers will help me later on to optimize my travel plans. But first things first. I will be the last one getting on the ferry which means all good sleeping spots on the deck are already gone.

I have to take the last deckchair, which is broken and located between a group of people who love talking the whole time. Some good luck of bad weather helps reducing these talks and finally I end up as the only one left on the deck for the next nights. Tents were smashed by the power of little night storms, sleeping bags were watered by the spray of the sea, dreams were interrupted by both of them. But with a little preparation (water resistant bivouak-bag for the sleeping bag) this is the best place to sleep on such a ferry. A gentle good-morning-kiss wakes me up…well, maybe not too gentle, a little too early for good morning and not my taste of a kiss as it was a flying deckchair landing on me, but awake is awake. So, time for breakfast. While the ferry passes some banks very closely, I sit at one of the big windows sipping my far too weak coffee, eating a slice of toast and seeing through the fog two bears tearing off a tree trunk to find their breakfast. They only look for a short moment in the direction of the ship until they focus on their breakfast preparation again. If this stays like that for the rest of the trip I’d be more than happy: Bears are more attracted by a piece of wood than by me.

It takes some time until the sun glances through the fog but when it succeeded the beauty of the Canadian nature shows its best. Some say the Inner Passage is one of the nicest waterways. I’m not too familiar with waterways in general but I really enjoy the continuously changing landscape of hundreds of islands in different sizes and shapes under the broken sun light of the northern sky. The whole ferry trip might be very boring if the weather stays bad and the landscape keeps hidden behind the clouds but we’re more than lucky and enjoy our luck in the sun.

But don’t fall asleep! You have to be prepared for appearing whales all the time. It’s the first time for me to see them in real and I’m fascinated by those huge creatures. After a certain time I stopped counting them but I never got bored watching them. Some of the passengers tried to guess according the back-fin what type of whale they saw. They used names I never heard before. In some cases if they couldn’t come to a conclusion they asked me. Why on earth me? Maybe my beard makes me look like a sea-bear. Well, after giving very useful answers like “I guess it was a whale and not a huge dolphin”, maybe only differentiating between “a really big whale” and “a not so big whale” they stopped asking me.
The first harbor, Ketchikan, is coming closer and I prepare to get off the ferry as I only got a ticket until here on this boat. My next ride would be one day later on a different ferry to Haines where I could get to the Alaskan Highway. The demand for ferry tickets is quite high and you have to reserve your ride at least some time ahead. My initial plan to go to Whittier by ferry was already stopped before I could go into details as this way is overbooked for months. But my motorcycle is not very demanding and doesn’t take too much space. So, let’s ask at the terminal. A small talk later and the fact that there are no other motorcyclists trying to get a spot, I got a ticket for the ferry I just jumped off to my initial destination Whittier. Oh, what a day! Now I even have the opportunity to drive into the city of Ketchikan and have a closer look into the capital of Salmon…or how they call themselves: “A drink-city with a fishing problem”.
It’s really a beautiful small city in which you can have a good time.

Back to the terminal, back to the ferry, back to my deckchair enjoying the view on more islands, more whales and another beautiful sun-set. The only “downside” of my new connection to Whittier is, that my motorcycle stands now in front of the ramp. So, I have to get off at the next harbor at Juneau. Otherwise the cars and trucks couldn’t leave or enter the ferry. Well, it’s not really a downside for me as I’m able to go to the capital of Alaska which is about 13 miles away from the ferry terminal. Without my motorcycle I wouldn’t be able to go that distance in the short time between off- and onboarding. As we arrive very early all shops are closed in the city and I was nearly the only one on the streets.

After walking around in the small city center I return to the boat for the next passage to Yakutat, the last stop before heading to Whittier where my real motorcycle trip should start. Time for some more conversations which take place nearly all the time as many of the passengers are interested where I want to go with this little monster of motorcycle. It seems that most of them have at least a small connection to motorcycles: Either they had at least one on their own, they made even such a big trip in the past, they were dreaming about such a trip or the dream is still in them somewhere. Lucky me that I can live this dream.
Yakutat is still sleeping when we arrive at 6am. But I’m not sure if it will be awake that soon. It seems its best days are long over. The only attraction is the Salmon railway, the only fish railway in the world which shut down about 50 years ago. Before entering the city you get warned that there might still be some bears in the streets, so I head out to the Coffee Shop close by to get a warm fresh coffee. Immediately after arriving, my motorcycle jacket catches some attention and I’m in the middle of a small conversation. I order a cappuccino and want to pay. Impossible after that conversation. A ship worker invites me and shows me the way to the Salmon railway which I visit with the best cappuccino of the last days.

Far before boarding time I’m already on board again packing my motorcycle as we will arrive at the final ferry terminal in the middle of the night and I just want to be able to jump on the motorcycle and drive off without any hassle. I can feel how exciting I get from hour to hour. It was nice on the ferry being able to take a relaxed shortcut, viewing great landscape from a different point of view and also watching uncounted numbers of the biggest mammals on earth. But now it’s time to turn the wheels.