Locate an Auto Repair Shop in Ketchikan, Alaska

Although Haines Jct. is always a lot cooler than Bakersfield. Yes it was summer and we were headed up into the Sierras for the week cut short by that stinking Toyota. My only time in Haines was 1974. Bought a new Dodge Van in Seattle and put it on the ferry to Haines. It was nothing but sunshine the whole trip. A very, very rare occurrence. I met 3 nurses headed to Anchorage and we had a grand time on that trip. 37 years in Alaska and my only time to Ketchikan, Juneau, Petersburg and Haines.

If Sarah Palin would know what kind of car this is if she saw it tooling down the street in Anchorage or...Ketchikan...or Juneau, Alaska...somewhere. What kind of car is this Sarah? Do ya know? Huh?

The "Train to Nowhere" will dwarf the cost of the "Bridge to Nowhere". In the last decade, the symbol for profligate federal spending was the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" -- a huge proposed span that would link the town of Ketchikan, Alaska, population 7,500, to an airport on Gravina Island. Powerful Alaska Republican lawmakers tried to stick American taxpayers with a huge chunk of the tab for this dubious project. This decade, the symbol for federal pork-barrel excess may well be Trains to Nowhere -- and if Democrats get their way, those boondoggles could span the country. At least in blue states. Last month, voters in Wisconsin and Ohio elected Republican governors. Rather than just talking about spending less, both Ohio's John Kasich and Wisconsin's Scott Walker had pledged, if elected, to reject funds earmarked for high-speed rail projects in the 2009 Obama stimulus package. Kasich said he would say no to $385 million for a train connecting Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. Walker said he would reject $810 million for a train from Madison to Milwaukee. Both Kasich and Walker understood: Just because Washington is throwing around money, that doesn't mean taxpayers get a free ride. There is no guarantee that if you build high-speed rail, passengers will come. As Randal O'Toole of the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute noted, "The Ohio and Wisconsin projects aren't even worthy of being called high-speed rail." The average speed for the Ohio's "3C" line is projected at 38.5 miles per hour; the speed for the Wisconsin line would average 59 mph. In short, these "high-speed" trains wouldn't even go faster than cars. With round-trip Madison-Milwaukee fares projected to range from $44 to $66, it could be cheaper for one person to drive and certainly cheaper for two. And you can always take the bus. Walker argued that Wisconsin, facing a $2.5 billion budget deficit next year, doesn't need to be saddled with the $7.5 million annual cost to operate the train. Train enthusiasts argued that Walker had it all wrong. You don't say no to a free car just because you have to pay for gas and other operating costs. But Wisconsin voters did not agree. The St. Norbert College Survey Center poll found that 55 percent of Wisconsin voters opposed taking the ostensibly free rail money. After they were elected, Walker and Kasich asked the Obama administration to allow them to spend that $1.2 billion rail money on other projects in their states. Walker wanted to fix his state's bridges and highways. Kasich asked that, if the U.S. Department of Transportation refused the request, Ohio's $385 million go to the U.S. Treasury to reduce the federal deficit. Instead, on Dec. 9, before either governor-elect assumed office, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced that his department would redirect the $1.2 billion that would have gone to Wisconsin and Ohio to 14 other states. As the Weekly Standard's Stephen F. Hayes wrote, LaHood had sent the message "if you don't want to waste our money, we'll find someone who will." California alone stands to gain up to $624 million of the forfeited stimulus funds -- on top of the more than $4.3 billion already earmarked for the planned high-speed rail project that would link San Francisco to Los Angeles/Anaheim and eventually reach Sacramento and San Diego. California voters passed a $10 billion bond measure in 2008 to help fund the $43 billion project. In November, the California High-Speed Rail Authority voted to approve the first segment of the project. It will start in the middle of nowhere (Borden) and go to nowhere (Corcoran)***. State Sen. Alan Lowenthal, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, said he fears the segment could turn into an "orphan" line, unusable by bullet trains. Noting that an Obama official had announced that California would get an extra $715 million in the San Joaquin Valley congressional district of Democrat Jim Costa, just before Costa narrowly won re-election, Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters quickly dubbed the segment the "train to nowhere." In July, LaHood had proclaimed the Madison-Milwaukee project as unstoppable. "High-speed rail is coming to Wisconsin. There's no stopping it." Walker wrote a letter to President Obama in which he protested, "It's outrageous for Secretary LaHood to suggest that your administration can force Wisconsin to continue building a train it doesn't want and cannot afford." LaHood's Dec. 9 power play makes it official. It doesn't matter what voters want or whether they think their state can afford to take free federal money. As far as the Obama administration is concerned, federal transportation dollars are the Democrats' loose change. Train to Nowhere *** That is a 69 mile stretch in the middle of CA. Not close to ANY populated area.

My wife & I did a honeymoon cruise in 2002. It was August, the itinerary was Alaska, and we were on Holland America's Volendam. We had a great time on the HA ship. We always had the best spot in every port. Some ships had to ferry their passengers ashore or docked further away, necessitating long walks to get to town. For on-ship activities we did several things but never ran into major crowds. I don't even recall there being long lines for the formal dinner; just a few minutes to wait before being seated. Most evenings we spent in a smaller lounge listening to a quartet play classical music. The pools were never overly crowded and even when stopped in Glacier Bay there wasn't much waiting for food (which they cooked on-deck at pool-side). Overall we called it a decadent experience. Though we avoided the midnight buffet I still averaged gaining a pound per day. Re: in a mob Ever checked into a hotel in Vegas? I've been more than 20 deep in line at Luxor with every last registration lane open. It was about as painful as the lines at Walmart on Black Friday (though not as bad as the one time I spent two and a half hours in line at Fry's .. it took that long even with 74 checkout lanes open). Checking in on our cruise was so much less of an event that I barely recall the process. No major lines. The only mob part was the obligatory life boat training which everyone promptly forgets. Re: shore excursions We did them but we aren't thrill seekers nor are we huge spenders. Also, the wife is afraid of heights. Trips like the helicopter ride that lands on a glacier were out as was the cable car up the side of the mountain. We did the train ride from Skagway ( http://www.wpyr.com/ ) which had historic value. The train was moderately full but nowhere near packed. Ketchikan saw us take a duck boat tour ( http://www.akduck.com/ ) so that was limited to 20 or so people. In one of the other towns we did an excursion up to pan for gold (predetermined success from the pans they provided so everyone's a winner but you were also free to pan away in the river). Size was limited to two passenger vans. From what we experienced it seemed the tour operators knew how to manage crowds and kept them moving or broken down into groups small enough to manage easily & quickly. After all, they make their money on the churn so efficiency matters. Re: town overrun by cruisers I could easily see that. It wasn't one ship docking at a time it was, well, pretty much all of them. Of course we were part of the crowd as my wife likes to get trinkets for friends & relatives. To avoid the worst, we moved further away from port right away since the throngs were mostly stopping at the first shops they saw. Besides, the shops closest to port were usually not the best value. In short, you can avoid the on-shore mobs easily enough. Also, there are excursions that aren't very expensive and have historical & knowledge value in addition to just sight seeing. I've done some off-season vacations to avoid the crowds and have had mixed success. Back around '90 or '91 I went to Florida with my first wife. We went just after tourist season and were able to score cheap hotel rooms and nearly empty beaches. However, on the down side the weather was exceptionally hot & humid (103 degrees in St. Augustine as I recall) which dampened our enthusiasm. Off-season is off-season for a reason. For this year, my wife has had to take personal time to deal with some family health issues so vacation time is limited. We're looking at a week, maybe two, in September so it will be off-season for most places with school being in session. A cruise is out this time and I get more ticked off at the airlines with each passing day so I'm thinking it will be another driving vacation. Anywhere within a two day drive or roughly 1200 miles of Chicago is fair game unless we've been there before.

story. Much of it actually has to do with cars or driving. I'll be 62 in June & have tended toward jobs involving travel most of my life. I'm a mechanical engineer by training and a traveler by nature. Worked at the Four Corners Power Plant out of college (ASU) in '71, then did a sales job in western Canada (Danish sound & vibration measuring equipment) for four years -- got to drive my MGB, then my 240-Z, all over the four western provinces, plus air travel to TO, Montreal & Denmark. This was when I drove 1000 miles (from Saskatoon to N. Van) in 17 hours, along with dozens of middle-of-the-night drives back and forth among Edmonton, Calgary & Vancouver, with occasional visits to Regina or Winnipeg. When I moved to B.C. I got into sailing, which eventually led to a trip to Wrangell, AK, to and from Victoria (where I kept my boat), via Pt. Hardy, Prince Rupert, Ketchikan & the Queen Charlottes. Hit Olympia, WA, the San Juans, the Gulf Islands & much in between over the four years I diddled with boats -- good times, really good times. Followed the sales job with a couple of years working for an acoustical consulting firm in the Vancouver area, followed by teaching at BCIT in Burnaby (the teaching job was why I had the time in the summer to sail to Alaska). Working the union job at BCIT convinced me that I had to either quit or get used to the idea I'd be sucking at the Civil Serpant tit for the rest of my life. I quit. That led to the 2.3 years of independent trucking, during which I leased myself & my Kenworth tractor to Boat Transit Inc in Costa Mesa (CA) -- hauled mostly overdimensional boats all over the U.S. & drove ~205K miles & hit 47 of the 48 contiguous states. Divorce led to moving to the Phoenix area, where I went back to work for the aerospace firm I worked for while I was in school -- AiResearch/Garrett/Allied-Signal/Honeywell over the years. Was able to log 100K+ miles on rental cars, plus 22 trips to Taiwan (I was a United guy then), hundreds to other places & several over the past 10 years to Germany & England -- loved the weekend drives to Switzerland & the Lake District. This has become my go-to board on Edmunds, where I've been posting for over a decade. Nice to hear what everyone else has been up to.