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Alaska Marine Highway
The Alaska Marine Highway is essentially a network of ships that will take you, your bike, your dogs and cats, and your car or RV, and everything in-between on a trip all the way from Bellingham, Washington to Dutch Harbor, Alaska; and to-and-from all of about 30 ports-of-call betwixt. You can either plan your whole trip a year ahead of time and make reservations, or you can just show up at the dock, buy a ticket and you're off. It's really like a city bus system, but on the water, but with the potential for literally traveling for thousands of miles on that bus if you like: Up to 3,500 miles to be exact. Wow. And it's cheap. Not as cheap as a bus, or with as interesting company maybe, but you know what I mean
Depending on how you want to do things, you can get on any Alaska Marine Highway (unto-herefore thus referred to as the AMH) ship with a backpack and a sleeping bag and you're fine. Yes, you can rock your stinky little hippy derriere all the way to the end of the line and back sleeping on the deck, nibbling only upon the large organic wheat germ cracker and free-range, Rattus Rattus brand, hemp-flavored, dried brown "bandicoot" you tucked away into your rucksack back at Reed College. Or, you can roll onboard like a Russian oligarch in your diamond-encrusted Bulgarian luxury Unicat RV and rent a private cabin to sleep the night away on your Uzbekstanian-goose-feather-like down mattress, nestled amidst the bulk of your sparkling Faberge egg collection, all the while squirting Acqua di Colonia Russa all over your underwear-clad hind end until your entire caviar-bloated body smells like a lusty Putin.*
Dang it I got off track. We were talking about budgets and money and stuff. That's the nice thing about the AMH system: you can go low-brau or high-brau. You can even go Lowenbrau if you like, because there are some really weird looking 1982 vintage bars on the ships if you want to slick down your tooter with a full range of organic compounds in which the hydroxy functional group (-OH) is bound to the carbon atom (we're talking about King Alcohol here), served to you by the last unionized bartenders left on the face of the earth, whom you are prohibited by law from tipping. (Strange but true, there is a sign on the wall that forbids this clearly.) Maybe that's why I'm so interested in Russians right now, because now that I think about it, our bartender was Big Boss of New Communist Alaska, or so he imagined. This fellow wouldst launch into a fist-pounding Politburo-style tirade about man-made global warming several of the other derisive ideologies you went in the bar to avoid thinking about in the first place, nearly spoiling your Doomsday Preppers conversation with the fellow next to you, not to mention your mutually acquired Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull buzz. Maybe you'll run into him too. Best of luck.
Anyway, yes, so now that you know that you can rock an AMH trip fully planned (or not), or on a budget (or not), now we can get on to other things. As I said before, you have a number of sleeping options. A lot of people literally set up their tents on the deck. There are a couple of different sections on the aft deck (depending on which particular ship you travel aboard), where you can camp out under the stars, or under the heated outdoor room of the solarium which, as suggested, is sheltered and even has heat lamps to keep you from dying of frostbite. Just kidding about that last part, but it does have heat lamps. You can also claim a section of seats in the movie theater inside the ship, and after "lights out" at around 11pm, you can pull all the cushions off the bottom of the three recliner chairs and put them together for a perfect, 6 foot long improvised mattress. That's what I did, and I slept like a baby. Man, the AMH people think of everything. You can even crash out on one of the several couches scattered about through the ship. Yes, it's sort of like a flop house. Or your house. However you want to say it.
As far as other traveling arrangements go, as I understand it, most of these ships have cafeterias where you can order up roasted herb venison and braised peacock livers, but maybe more like hamburgers and that sort of intestinal fare. As I recall, I got out of there for about $10 a meal, nothing serious. It's a breakfast, lunch, and dinner option. When you're not nearly choking to death while lapsing into a oxygen-deprived sleep-apnea reverie (sleeping), or laying on your back on the cafeteria floor forking whipped-cream-soaked green jello into your beak by the cubic liter (eating), you'll be enjoying the amazing scenery, which is everywhere. It goes by all day and all night at about 15 knots. Along the way, there are a lot of different towns serviced, at which the ship will usually dock for several hours at a time, giving you the opportunity to take a stroll in whatever village you happen to be in. That was great. Well, other than all the starving Alaskan children lined up outside the gangway, selling broken seashells and washed-up Japanese tsunami debris they collected on the beach. It really is a sorry sight. You get off the ship in all of your tourist splendor: Adorned in your finest "Deadliest Shirt" shirt and sash-wrapped tweed Indian Jones hat, striding confidently along in your khaki pocket-saturated shorts and neon purple crocs with the white calf-length socks underneath, ready for a Kodiak grizzly to jump out of the bushes so you can quickly subdue it with the twelve-six Billy Banks karate chop you learned in front of the TV while trying to work off those 365 creme brules you ate for dessert at the downtown diner every day after lunch this year, and then all of a sudden you have all these raggedy-ann, snot-encrusted scarecrow beggars dressed in paper mache and black garbage bag clothes they constructed from the scavengings of the local dumpsters running after you asking for a dime or whatever it is that they want. That is some really sad business right there, and it's really upsetting, and frankly I have had enough of it. Alaska needs to build a coal mine or a giant saw blade factory for all these kids to work in, and keep them out of my vacation. SHEESH.
Anyway, goshdang it I got off track again. Where was I? Already talked about sleep like five times and food and oh yeah, ports of call... From the end points of the AMH system, like Bellingham and Dutch Harbor, a ship will show up about once a week, so you sort of have to plan ahead that way if you're starting out on either end. At many points in-between, ships show up every day or every other day or so. I got off the ship a couple of times at the normal stops for a few hours to stretch my stork legs, but I also completely disembarked on a few occasions and spent several days in a number of cities: Juneau, Ketchikan, and Sitka to be exact. This brings up another point, if you really want to keep things on a budget, Alaska has a lot of hostels, which I also stayed at during my evenings off the ship. I hadn't done that since I was in my 20's, so I thought I'd try it again, and met some really awesome people. Righteous. Makes me want to howl like a savage Alaskan wolf.
But now that I think about it, hostels remind me of hippies and commercial fishermen, to which I should add, I'm not saying a trip on the AMH is perfect. Like I alluded to much earlier as well, you might run into a hippy or two out on the deck, and yes maybe even a few odorous piscators. Nothing wrong with fishermen, unless they have a God-complex, which some of them do. But come to think of it, I used to be a hippy of sorts, then I looked in the mirror one day only to see a sour-faced, malcontented fisherman with insects living in my greazy hair. So anyway, thus mentioned to amplify that the AMH isn't just for weirdos like those-just-referred-to, you're going to run into all kinds of people: Nice folks who are moving to and from Alaska, backpackers aiming for the Yukon, pleasant car vacationers offloading at Skagway, youngsters heading to the canneries of Dillingham for the brief summer work season, Harley jacketed motorcyclists destined for Denali, the RV retiree crowd going to Nome to pan for gold, and foreigners galore trying to sneak into Our Exalted Homeland to schmooze off the multitude of Obama-care benefits we've been receiving for years now (by that I mean Canadians mostly). I didn't see a single radioactive-dart-wielding Russian on the ship though, which is about enough to tempt me into actually going back and doing it all over again. So save your pocket change and go take yourself a surprisingly mind-blowing vacation this summer. I'm telling you what. You certainly should.
Amazing things I saw on my three week trip, other than all the starving children:
Strange things I heard on my trip (non-embellished), all from the ship's intercom:
Craziest thing that happened on the ship:
Alaska Marine Highway System mainpage Passenger and vehicle fares to the normal places, 2012 Passenger and vehicle fares to the Martian-ridden and Russian-infiltrated Aleutians, 2012:___________________________________ (*Disclaimer: I do not engage in such behaviors nor do I harbor any anti-Putinistic sentiments that would qualify me for a polonium dart to the diaper-depot ala Alexander Livinenko resulting in an untimely expiration due to the a-radiation effects of daughter isotope gigabecquerels. Screw all of that. I love Russians. In fact, Slavic moguls and ex-KGB types maintain a high standing with me. I think of them often as I glance warily from side-to-side while depositing baby Andropov's into my own opulent water-throne.) Related Articles: |
ey man, I know how it is. I really do. Sometimes you just don't want
to spend $1,500 a week on a cruise ship to see some spectacular bidness.
That's fine, it really is. If that's your story, and you really want
to get out of the house this summer and take a great vacation with a
budget in mind along the western coast of say, Canada and 
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Stay tuned.
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