Skagway to Prince Rupert - Inside Passage

Friday, January 9th, waiting all day in Skagway. We went for supper at the Skagway Brewing Co. restaurant. They make their own brand of beer and the friendly waiter/bar tender was happy to regale stories about Skagway..
The MV Ferry Taku departed from Sdagway at 0100 hrs Saturday, Jan.10th. We were assigned an outside berth with upper and lower bunks. The ship was built in 1963 in Seattle, Washington. It is well appointed with gift shops, observation lounge, cafeteria, and bar. We toured the ship before going to bed to get oriented with the layout.
The inside passage from Skagway to Haines loomed through a vague moonlit mountainous landscape as seen from the observation deck. The channel cutting between two low mountain ranges seemed to be only ¼ mile wide! It’s hard to imagine large cruise ships navigating through this narrow channel.
The odd foot passenger spread out sleeping mats on the floor of the observation deck which was kept in semi darkness.
The top bunk had Paul’s name on it and he had a sense of déjà vu bringing back childhood memories. We both slept through docking in Haines as we tied up in Juneau at 0600 hrs.with Haines situated between Skagway and Juneau.
The ferry passage from Juneau, capital of Alaska, to Kate took all day providing panoramic views all along the way. The crew were put through boat and fire drills when we were reading in the cafeteria lounge. We spent part of the afternoon in the bar lounge chatting. The lady bar tender sold Faye a book called Sourdough School wriiten by her grandmother, a chronicle of her teaching experience in Alaska.
After Kate the next port of call was Petersburg arriving sometime in middle of the night after which was the port of Wrangell. From Wrangell the sail was through the Wrangell channel, a long twisting passageway which eventually opens up to a body of water taking us to Ketchikan where we had to disembark ashore and wait twelve hours to board the M/V Kennicott to Prince Rupert arriving there at 0700 hrs on Monday morning.
Ketchikan, a port town, has an impressive amount of recreation and fishing boats located up and down the waterfront. There are lots of amenities throughout the town. We had time to explore driving both ways up and down the coast. The Cultural Centre is a museum depicting the Haida, Tlingat, and Tsimshian First Nations. It was very interesting. Faye thought Paul had an uncanny resemblance to a picture of an elder!
In Prince Rupert we dropped in to visit with nephew Gary McQuaid and his two girls, Hyla and Araya who took immediately to Faye. After showers and much needed laundry, we all had lunch at a wonderful dockside restaurant, then took the two hour drive, along the famous Skeena River, up to Terrace to visit with neice Jeannine, Greg and sons Nolan and Damian.
Later......