After working in Sitka for a day or so, I (Brent) got an urgent call ("urgent" by census standards, not by emergency room standards) from my census supervisor saying that they needed help in Ketchikan. So, I gathered two of my teammates who volunteered for the assignment. We boarded the M/V Columbia, the flagship of the Alaska Marine Highway System, for the 21-hour ride to Ketchikan.
The ferry is a great way to see Alaska's Inside Passage and meet people. The Columbia can carry 499 people and 134 automobiles. The food on board is good and the prices aren't bad. They showed the movie "How to Train your Dragon" in the theater. We played cards for several hours with some new-found friends. During one round of cards, the captain announced that there were whales ahead, and we saw a humpback whale breaching on the starboard side of the ship. I listened to a forest ranger give a talk on the geography of the area, called Liz (yes, there was cell phone reception for at least part of the trip) and then called it a night.
There are berths on the ferry, but because of the "just in time" nature of our trip, the berths were all sold out, so we slept outside on deck chairs in the solarium (3 walls and a roof). Some of our card-shark friends loaned us blankets and pillows. Most of the night, they had heaters running overhead (see the nice, red glow above) so we were reasonably warm until they turned them off early in the morning. After they turned the heaters off, it got cold fast.
One couple slept in a tent outside. They secured their tent to the deck by way of state of the art, sophisticated, over-engineered... duct tape! I would highly recommend the ferry to anyone wanting the sights of a cruise for a fraction of the cost.
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