Training Log Archive: blairtrewinIn the 1 days ending Aug 15, 2018:
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Wednesday Aug 15, 2018 #
3 PM
Run 40:00 [3] 6.6 km (6:04 / km)
Perhaps it was as well for my mental health that I was off the ship when a subsequently-rescinded announcement was made that we wouldn't be leaving Ketchikan until Wednesday morning. This morning I found out a bit more of the story - they thought they were going to have to fly a part in from Anchorage, but someone managed to track the relevant part down at the Ketichikan Wal-Mart, and we ended up leaving Ketchikan around 9pm, now 11 hours behind schedule.
Some of the port stops are reasonably long for reasons which were not immediately obvious to me. Petersburg's was only 45 minutes, but that was long enough to find a place with decent coffee close to the terminal (none of the terminals except Skagway's are close to the centre of town, though Petersburg's, like Ketchikan's, is still in the urban area). The one in "Juneau" (the terminal is actually 25km out of town, to avoid the ships having to do a big out-and-back - the passage north of Juneau is too shallow for shipping) was about 2 hours. I didn't think that was long enough to hire a taxi to go to the Mendenhall Glacier, but it was enough for a run.
A look at a map in the ferry terminal suggested that, after about 1km on the highway (which at least had a decent shoulder) there was a coastal trail, and so it proved - a nice spot to be in, partly coastal rainforest and partly beach. (Beaches are actually a pretty rare sight in this part of the world - typically the forest comes right down to the waterline). Felt better on the run than yesterday, although that's not an especially high bar to clear.
As expected, the trip was highly scenic, getting progressively more so as we went further north (one upside of the delay is that we probably got more of the good bits in daylight and in decent weather than we would have on the original schedule). Eventually made Skagway about 1am - brownie points for the B+B host who got/stayed up for me (I'd rung from Juneau to let them know what was happening).
The ferry was definitely a travel experience. You get to see most of what the cruise ship passengers see at a vastly lower price and without being in the company of several thousand of your new best friends anywhere you go ashore (and, although it was still mostly an older crowd, there were a few people, other than the crew, who were younger than I was). On the downside, the system is clearly starved of funds - although apparently a couple of the older ships (mine was 55 years old) are being replaced in the next couple of years - facilities on board are reasonably basic - definitely not a Baltic Sea vessel - and the food ranges from passable to almost inedible.
Some of the port stops are reasonably long for reasons which were not immediately obvious to me. Petersburg's was only 45 minutes, but that was long enough to find a place with decent coffee close to the terminal (none of the terminals except Skagway's are close to the centre of town, though Petersburg's, like Ketchikan's, is still in the urban area). The one in "Juneau" (the terminal is actually 25km out of town, to avoid the ships having to do a big out-and-back - the passage north of Juneau is too shallow for shipping) was about 2 hours. I didn't think that was long enough to hire a taxi to go to the Mendenhall Glacier, but it was enough for a run.
A look at a map in the ferry terminal suggested that, after about 1km on the highway (which at least had a decent shoulder) there was a coastal trail, and so it proved - a nice spot to be in, partly coastal rainforest and partly beach. (Beaches are actually a pretty rare sight in this part of the world - typically the forest comes right down to the waterline). Felt better on the run than yesterday, although that's not an especially high bar to clear.
As expected, the trip was highly scenic, getting progressively more so as we went further north (one upside of the delay is that we probably got more of the good bits in daylight and in decent weather than we would have on the original schedule). Eventually made Skagway about 1am - brownie points for the B+B host who got/stayed up for me (I'd rung from Juneau to let them know what was happening).
The ferry was definitely a travel experience. You get to see most of what the cruise ship passengers see at a vastly lower price and without being in the company of several thousand of your new best friends anywhere you go ashore (and, although it was still mostly an older crowd, there were a few people, other than the crew, who were younger than I was). On the downside, the system is clearly starved of funds - although apparently a couple of the older ships (mine was 55 years old) are being replaced in the next couple of years - facilities on board are reasonably basic - definitely not a Baltic Sea vessel - and the food ranges from passable to almost inedible.