Ferry, Icebergs, TrainTunnel, etc

Once again we woke up to rain. Art was very thankful that he has disconnected everything but the power cord last night when it was dry.

We were in the lineup on time and they began loading 10 minutes later, Gillian in the tracker the second car to board. One vehicle at a time, tickets and I.D. checked carefully before boarding. The larger vehicles were selected one at a time by a deck officers in order to make best use of the space.

It certainly took a lot of time though. If BC Ferries had to follow this procedure they would have to run more ships, double staffing and crew levels because one crew wouldn't have time to make more than one return sailing per day. Whenever we travel by ferry anywhere we are reminded how good the BC Ferries system is--one that BC residents seem to love to complain about.



The MV Aurora left on time in fairly heavy fog, the fog horn sounding at regular intervals and a seaman at the very bow on watch.

The restaurant was open right away so we were well tuckered in by the time we pulled away from the dock. Very slowly the fog lightened and we were able to see the traffic in the harbour; tankers, tugs fishing boats and pleasure craft.


As we made our way through the slowly thinning mist we began see hints of land around us. At one point we sailed very close to one of the marker buoys to find a sea-lion resting.






The weather continued to slowly improve which we thought to be a good thing as before long we were seeing icebergs!








Soon the sun was shining and the views of Prince William Sound no longer hidden away.








As we approached Whittier, our port of landing, we came across much more marine traffic. We overtook one barge that must have been carrying at least 200 containers. And a boat!


At Whittier the unloading went much more quickly that the loading had in Valdez and soon we were parked in the boat launch area to hook up the tracker for towing. Five minutes later we were on our way.


Well the GPS said to go straight ahead!!!!!

We had heard that there was a tunnel but weren't prepared for this! The 2 1/2 mile tunnel is open to automobile traffic for 15 minutes each hour each way-- the rest of the time it is used by trains!


The cloud began to roll back in and down, the scenery much the same as before: Water, flat land and mountains. A couple of hours later we arrived in Seward.




.