by Dan
We left Homer the morning of 8/18, intending to drive back to Anchorage for a flight that evening to Juneau (and then go on to Haines). But halfway to Anchorage, the traffic was at a complete standstill. There was no official information, but cars were turning around and heading the other way. A couple of inquiries revealed that the road ahead was closed due to a fire, and wouldn’t reopen until at least the next day. I naively asked what the alternate route was. Answer: A laugh, and then “there is none.” So we backtracked toward the nearest town – Soldotna – and cleverly called ahead for a place to stay. We got the next-to-last room at the hotel! Alaska Air cooperated in changing our Anchorage to Juneau flight from Aug 18 to Aug 19.
Next morning (Aug 19), it seemed still unclear if the road would open, so we contacted Marjy, our amazing Native-Alaskan travel agent. She said there were no flights available out of the nearest airport, in Kenai, but we could go back to Homer and get a flight to Anchorage from there. That sounded reasonable, except. . . . We had a rental car from Budget, which has no office in Homer. So Marjy helped arrange for a ride from the Kenai airport (where we dropped the car) back to Homer. Marjy is fabulous! If you’re ever planning a trip to Alaska, let us know and we’ll put you in touch with her.
So here we were in Homer (again, but at the airport), waiting for our 4pm flight to Anchorage, to catch our 7pm RavnAir flight to Juneau. Sounds easy, right? After all, the flight from Homer to Anchorage is under an hour.
But then it turned out that Ravn Air added an extra flight, and so ours was delayed. Once again, a call to Alaska, and we got switched to the 8pm out of Anchorage. We made it, with about an extra 30 minutes to spare, and finally got to Juneau that night.
Our transportation from Juneau to Haines the next morning, Aug 20 (more about Haines itself and why we were going there in a later post) was yet another story. There are two ways to go: ferry (a beautiful, 4+ hour ride) or seaplane (a quick trip). We had opted for beauty, and Marjy had booked us on the ferry. But some time in July, the Inland Boatman’s Union, who operate the ferries, went on strike, so we switched to the seaplane. A day or two before we left home, the strike settled, and we were back to the ferry.
<From Nina: We had a wonderful conversation on the ferry with a 3rd-generation Alaskan woman from Skagway, and a Tlingit family. The Tlingits are the largest tribe in southeastern Alaska, and have a history of trading across Alaska, down to SF, to Hawaii and even to Japan. They had a reputation as fierce warriors and talented traders, and were very powerful in this part of Alaska.>
The final mix-up on this was that when we got off the ferry in Haines, our car rental was not at the ferry dock but at the airport, because our final change of transport hadn’t gotten communicated to Marjy’s friend from whom we were arranging the rental. That was a minimal problem, and we settled into our hotel in Haines by about noon on 8/20.
Fendels in Alaska 