We "drove the Alaska Marine Highway" on the MV Columbia from Bellingham, Washington to Skagway, Alaska. Here we are during one of our brief stops, with our "Blue Canoe" in the background.

The first stop of six stops for the Columbia was in Ketchikan, Alaska. With an hour and a half to kill, we took a quick bus trip out to the Saxman Totem Pole Village. It was 6:30am and it was raining very hard.

We got off the ferry at the end of the line in Skagway, Alaska. We hiked up the hill to a scenic overlook where we took this picture. We took the White Pass & Yukon Railroad 3-hour round trip while we were here.

The only way to get from Skagway to the rest of Alaska is to drive through Canada. Here we are crossing the border into Alaska from the Yukon Territory.

We made the 365-mile round trip up the Dalton Highway to the Arctic Circle. This is really what's there. No snow. No polar bears. No icebergs. The Dalton Highway follows the Trans-Alaska Pipeline all the way up to Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean. We turned around at the Arctic Circle, about 300 miles short of the end of the road.

We rode the Denali shuttle bus to the Eilson Visitor Center, 66-miles into the park. There we were, on August 17th, and it was snowing - their first of the summer.

The Iditarod Trail Race Headquarters in Wasilla is just a little north of Anchorage. We met a few huskies and a litter of pups, but didn't go for a dog-sled ride (they use sleds with wheels when there's no snow).

This totem pole is in front of the court house building in downtown Anchorage.

In Valdez, Alaska, we took a 6-hour boat ride (on the Lu Lu Belle) out in Prince William Sound. After seeing otters, puffins, eagles, and stellar sea lions, the boat heads toward the Columbia Glacier. We stopped six and a half miles from the face of the glacier because the water is clogged solid with icebergs.