Wow, what a day! We woke up in our stunning freedom camp and continued our drive to Skagway which is in Alaska, and also where we had the ferry booked.

The drive this morning was incredible, through snow and mountains and frozen lakes. What should have been a 1 hour trip to Skagway took us over two hours!

We crossed into Alaska and both of us were so excited. A tour bus driver took our photo at the sign. Then we had the border crossing. We were told the US border were very strict. We were expecting a queue but there was no one.

They had us pull over and did a quarantine inspection. Our blueberries, strawberries and eggs were all ok! Even our bacon was allowed! and the guards were very nice.

Today I saw my first porcupine, a weird looking creature sitting in the middle of the road. I snapped a couple of photos.

We arrived in the town of Skagway and were blown away by all the people. There were four cruise boats in and I hadn’t seen this many people since Vegas! We were both a little overwhelmed! Skagway is the final port of the inside passage, and also is a quaint little tourist town.

And then Mike got internet for the first time since he booked the ferry. Our tickets were for Wednesday, not today (Sunday). But he’d definitely booked them for today.

We went in to see what was going on, and the man said they do that if there is no space available, they automatically book you on the next available booking. Well that’s a crap system!

We asked if we could go on standby in case someone canceled. He said to come back at 12.30. So we did, and then he said they weren’t doing any standby bookings that day. He seemed like a jerk and I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t do standby.

Back at the van, this thought was nagging me. So we went back in and talked to someone else, a girl this time. She said, sure, we can put you on standby. She said it’s a known booking bug and they had raised tickets for it but no resolution as yet.

She checked us in on standby and when we entered the queue for the ferry, we were surprised to see a few others in the standby queue. So that guy was just clearly a lazy prick!

Anyway, we waited a couple of hours, and voila! Everyone in the standby queue made it onboard!

It was a beautiful ferry ride through the sounds, quite different from the Marlborough sounds due to the snowy mountains.

We are now in the town of Haines, Alaska. It’s a cute little town with less people(so far at least)

We stopped at a rest stop by the side of the road with stunning views of the inlet.