NOW (finally) Prince Rupert

One of many waterfalls

a view from the road

I jumped the gun a bit with our arrival in Prince Rupert - I wanted to tell you about an awesome stretch of road just outside of the coastal town.  During my last post, I told you how the road followed the Canada National Railway route, along the Skeena River.  The river was the main route from the middle of the Canadian Rockies to the coast with lots of logging and mining materials being shipped along the waterway until the railroad was built.  What was interesting is that this last 30 miles or so of the road/train tracks seemed to be blasted out of hard, black volcanic rock.  If  you have been to the "big island" of Hawaii, you will know what it looks like.  The steep cliffs were towering over the road, and our car was sandwiched between these two impossible things - the fast-flowing river and the rock-hard cliffs.  However, the sharp edges of the cliffs were broken up impossibly by hundreds of waterfalls, tumbling down the cliff sides.  We had to actually drive under one, as it made it way across the road.  I truly could not get enough but it was really hard to get a photo.  As we drove into Prince Rupert, we realized that the "hard part" of our trip was over.  We were certainly looking forward to the ferry ride and our arrival in Juneau.  We did have a very nice room in Prince Rupert, one that overlooked the bay and even had binoculars in the big bay window in our room.  On Friday, we did a bit of sight-seeing - watching the float planes take off and land in the cove and I had the most famous of all Canadian food delights - the poutine - which is french fries covered in brown gravy and topped with cheddar cheese curds.  mmmmmmm  I believe they started selling it at Miller Park this summer.  Then it was off to the ferry - were we sat for FOUR HOURS in our car, waiting for the ferry gates to open and to go through US customs.  We were told to arrive between 3 - 4 hours before departure time (which was 9:15 p.m.) so we pulled up to the barrier at 4:50 p.m.  Then, we waited.  We read, we slept, we went inside the ferry terminal to warm up and use the facilities.  Since we knew the ferry was supposed to leave at 9:15 p.m., we were certainly concerned that the customs officers didn't start checking cars until 9:00 p.m.  While it went fast once we cleared customs (we had no problem), we realized that the ferry time was on Alaskan time, which is one hour behind Pacific time, which we were using.  So, instead of 9:00 p.m., it was only 8:00 p.m. and still "on time".