(C) Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural
This story was originally published by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Eighteen Hours by Ferry [1]

['Claire Carlson', 'The Daily Yonder', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar']

Date: 2025-06-04

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see? Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week.

Up until last week, Alaska existed only in my imagination. I pictured a vast landscape full of glaciers and grizzlies and Chris McCandless in his teal bus outside of Denali, living off the land until it killed him.

Just like any preconceived notion, I was mostly incorrect about what Alaska is. I spent the week in coastal Southeast Alaska, first Ketchikan and then Juneau, with my mom, who had also never been but knew far more about “Seward’s Folly” than I’d ever been taught. As we spent our week traveling by foot, car, bus, ferry and plane, it became abundantly clear that you can only scratch the surface of Alaska’s rich history in a week’s or month’s visit.

But most visitors don’t even get that. In Ketchikan and Juneau, cruise tourists turn both places into an amusement park in the summer. Massive ships roll into town every day from May to September, parking at the harbor and obscuring the waterfront view. From them spill thousands of tourists released from their floating skyscrapers to spend just a few hours on land. They might pile onto a tour bus that takes them into the surrounding mountains or to Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska’s most accessible glacier right outside Juneau, but most of them stay closer to town, patronizing the jewelry and souvenir shops that litter the streets.

Cruise ships dock at Ketchikan’s ports. (Photo by Claire Carlson)

For locals, the cruises are both a blessing and a curse. Juneau and Ketchikan are the two most touristed cruise ports in Alaska, with roughly a million and a half visitors passing through each town via cruise every year. And with them comes money: In 2023, the cruise industry brought $375 million in direct spending to Juneau, according to a report prepared for the city.

But like any highly-touristed destination, there’s a certain flattening of culture that occurs with the influx of visitors. Most tourists visiting for just a few hours would never learn how the totem poles that dot the street corners of Ketchikan, for example, bear a painful legacy of pillaging and vandalism; that many of them are recreations of totem poles wrecked by tourism long ago. (The totem pole in Seattle’s Pioneer Square was actually stolen from a Tlingit village by businessmen on their own version of a cruise ship in 1899, and was later replicated after an arson attempt and dry rot ruined the original).

In Juneau, one house at the mouth of a popular hiking area bears a sign that reads “TOO MANY TOURISTS GO HOME” in giant block letters, reflecting the burden of tour buses on residential neighborhoods.

Only in the evening, after the cruises have set off to their next destination, can you start to imagine what it might be like to live in Southeast Alaska where tundra, temperate rainforest, and ocean converge. This landscape isn’t an easy one to live in – just ask the miners who tried to forge a living during the Klondike gold rush. The only way to survive the long, brutally cold winters were through several layers of thermal underwear and many loaves of sourdough bread.

It’s still difficult a century later: both Ketchikan and Juneau are only accessible via plane or boat. While they’re the urban hubs for far more rural communities in the region, they still lack enough healthcare providers to properly service Southeast Alaska. A plane or helicopter ride to Anchorage or Seattle is often in order for any serious health emergency.

Nugget Falls, Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska. (Photo by Claire Carlson) Yet still, people live there. It’s not hard to see why: step foot onto any part of this long, skinny panhandle and you’re practically hit upside the head by a soaring bald eagle. Take a few more steps and you’re yielding the trails to marmots and black bears. The mountains are etched with waterfalls and the waterfalls teem with salmon and trout. Alaska is a stunningly beautiful place, and the best way to see it is to travel through it slowly, savoring every minute.

I thought about this while on the ferry ride from Ketchikan to Juneau. It’s one leg of the Alaska Marine Highway System, which covers 3,500 miles of coastline from Bellingham, Washington, to Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Chain. Most people skip the ferry in favor of a much faster plane ride, but if you have the time, take the ferry. Ketchikan to Juneau took 18 hours and we saw some of the most gorgeous scenery imaginable.

The best part is that once you’re onboard, time is out of your control – all there is to do is settle into the journey and spectate. What else could you really ask for?

Related

Republish This Story Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://dailyyonder.com/eighteen-hours-by-ferry/2025/06/04/

Published and (C) by Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0 International.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailyyonder/