Boarding the MV Kennicott II

Editor's note: these blog updates are now several days old to us because they were written each day over the ferry journey. Hopefully, they will still be in context. 

Plus, the spotwalla should be back working again. It seems it needs to be reset periodically, which I had not been doing while aboard the ferry. That has been corrected.

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Saturday, September 5^th.

Kamloops to Alaska Ferries Terminal, Bellingham, Washington 354.6 km

Cumulative distance travelled: 1199 km

Average speed: 79 km/h

Maximum speed: 116 km/h

I stand corrected. It was said by the Romans of old that an army marches on its stomach.  No sooner had we finished 2 for 1 appetizers at the pub last night that Niels was telling us about a GREAT place for breakfast. Since we had already planned to march down Highway 5A, the Douglas Lake Ranch was a priority stop, about 75 km south of Kamloops. 

The scenery along highway 5a

Oop! Looks like someone was in too much of a hurry!

My aunt would say, "if you don't have time to do it right now, when will you have time to correct the mistake later"

 The Douglas Lake Ranch is no ordinary ranch. At 248,000 deeded acres and around 800,000 acres of Crown grazing land, the cattle herd at about 20,000 makes this ranch large even by Texan standards. It has a long history, tracing its roots back to the mid 1880s and owned by the Woodward family and subsequently by Bernie Ebbers, who since 2003 has been working for the U.S. government making licence plates.

More importantly, there is a hotel at the ranch called Quilchena Hotel, which was originally opened in 1908, though I continuous operation since 1958. While we were waiting for breakfast, Nan and I walked around the hotel, including the upstairs. Unfortunately, room doors were not open so we could not see inside but the hotel had a ton of character and charm. One room upstairs was the “Ladies Parlour”, which appeared to be a guest room because there was a large, four poster bed in there but it had windows to the inside of the hotel. Maybe there was some significance to this feature, but it wasn’t revealed to us. 

Hotel lobby.Complete with turn of the century accoutrements....

...Like these.

Getting there was the first great ride of the trip. Highway 5A winds its way along a series of farms and lakes, the first real opportunity we have had to scuff the corners of our tires. We are all sporting new ones, so it was great to give them a workout. On top of which, despite it again being a fresh start to the morning at a whopping 6 degrees, the sun was shining and casting a warm glow over the country side.  Rolling hills, mostly grasslands but some small pockets of forest and dotted by a variety of ranch homes, some simple and small, sitting close to the highway with a little fenced area for animals and others majestic and pretentious, situated on hills overlooking expansive valleys. There was plenty to see, aside from the road in front of us; Nan kept a lookout for interesting things and would point them out to me when practical but also, kept a keen eye for deer, of which we saw several.  When riding a twisties, it is helpful to have a second set of eyes; as the driver, I don’t have the opportunity to look around too much because it requires steely concentration on the road. With Nan riding shotgun, she is able to survey a wider range of vistas and helps to find the deer before I might see them.

Once we had completed our breakfast, and Nan somehow managing to keep herself from visiting the “General Store” at the ranch (I think cognizant of the fact that there is virtually NO room in any of our luggage, and not wanting to hold a pottery bowl in her lap for the rest of the trip), we proceeded to Merritt where we joined the Coquihalla own to Hope, where we had a small break, then crossed over the river and took Highway 7 and avoided the busy road into Vancouver.  We still joined up with it, and it was busy, which added somewhat to my stress as I was starting to think about how we were doing in terms of getting to the ferry terminal at the required time. 

It seems that it was going a little slower than I had anticipated, which was due mainly to my thinking that we had plenty of time. From Kamloops, it was only 350 km to the ferry terminal, with a border crossing, so I was not at all concerned about getting there in time. We had left Kamloops at 8:45 am and had until 3:00 pm, which was ample. I was happy when I saw the “delay” at the border posted at only “5 minutes”, which ended up being more like 15+, but we were fighting traffic and trying to stay together as cars jostled for positioning. 

At the border crossing, we were in a different lane from the guys but get this: our border guard asked us where we were headed and we told him Alaska.  He said that we were going the wrong direction, and then we got into a discussion about whose responsibility is was to be navigating.  I the guys’ lane, they were grilled about where they were heading, and were promptly told they were heading in the wrong direction. Not sure who took the blame for navigating in that lane. 

By the time we stopped for gas and to buy some wine, we were falling further behind schedule.  Plus, Stan’s Garmin and my Garmin disagreed as to how far it was to the terminal though in looking at the routes, they seemed pretty similar. Anyway, we selected one and proceeded, which took us down a small distance on Interstate 5 and heavy, weekend traffic but we did manage to get to the terminal by 4:00p.m., only one hour past our appointed time. I wasn’t too stressed about whether or not we would make the sailing but I was concerned that they may have a procedure for loading motorcycles versus cars and trucks and that they would want us to be first.  Turns out, it wasn’t an issue plus, the sailing is no where near full, contrary to what at least one deck hand anticipated.

Entering the MV Kennicott at Bellingham.

The car deck was not full out of Bellingham.  While we weren't the last to load, we were close to it.

Loading was pretty easy and they had favourite spots for bikes. Though we had all brought our own tie down straps, as instructed for motorcyclists, there were plenty of tie down straps suitable for motorcycles.  It seems the issue is that motorcyclists are so particular about how their bikes being tied down, the ferries crew don’t want the responsibility of attaching the strap to a breakable part of the bike.  Anyway, John helped me tie down my bike so we could pretty much ram a B.C. Ferry and my bike would stay upright. However, it might not withstand shenanigans on the bridge.

There was a fairly narrow space to park the bikes...

And few options for tying them down.

Looking down the car deck ramp.

On board, Nan had quickly secured our berth while I had tied down the bike. No sooner are we aboard that we see the time is actually 4:15 p.m. and we are laughing because we think we have really been on time for the ferry all along and that somehow, we had messed up the time change going into B.C. Turns out that the ferry is on Alaska time, so as soon as we are aboard, we have left Pacific time behind! Either that or they are just messing with our minds. 

This was our cabin. Not palatial but more than enough. It was a nice touch having a couch where we could sit (when it wasn't folding into a bed).

The gang on board.

Nan getting ready for the movie!

The boat is large and there is some exploration to be done once aboard. Our berth is quaint; two bunks and two fold down bunks, the lower of which converts to a couch, so we actually have quite a bit of room.  The Three Bears have the same arrangement and after our first tour of the boat, when we discover that the bar has been permanently closed due to a liquor licencing issue, we convene in their room to drink a bottle of wine that we had brought aboard. Archaic. They had a very nice arrangement off the cafeteria with an actual bar, tables and chairs with a view off the port side (port = four letters = left = four letters) and big screen T.V. Too bad. It seems the legislators have all been smoking too much of that legal marijuana. NOW the rule is that patrons are limited to two drinks, only with a meal, to be brought to the table by a sommelier to remove the screw cap and patrons can sit only in a cordoned-off area. This should cast no aspersions on the hard working Alaska Marine Highways staff, who think the rule is stupid, too. I can’t believe they legislated away our right to get drunk, then get sick by our own devices rather than just from the rough seas. After a somewhat stressful day dealing with vacation issues, I needed a gin and tonic. 

Among the MV Kennicott amenities that have NOT been legislated away, there is a movie theatre which shows a variety of documentaries and relatively current fare, like tonight’s showing of Maleficent and a documentary about our first port of call Ketchikan, which spent an inordinate amount of screen time on Red Creek, the former red light district. Actually, that’s not bad when you think about it. This is a working vessel, getting people and cargo to destinations, not a cruise ship. The theatre is a bonus. They are also considerate enough to announce when there is something interesting off the boat.

Notwithstanding the aforementioned movie fare, my final thoughts of the day are of sailing by Vancouver, seeing the lights of Grouse Mountain above the city and knowing that I was looking at what was probably my brother’s house lights further south in Ocean Park.