Writer and fisherman Joe Upton recounts the riveting stories of explorers of the past and seafarers of the present in JOURNEYS THROUGH THE INSIDE PASSAGE. His chronicle offers events vivid in their telling: the journey of widow Muriel Blanchet, who solo navigated a small vessel in the 1930s with her five children; the failed meeting of explorers Alexander Mackenzie and George Vancouver in 1793; countless sinkings; and tales from the author's own experiences plying this legendary waterway.

In the spring of 2010, with her world scaled down to an 18-foot sea kayak and the 1,200-mile ribbon of water called the Inside Passage, Susan Conrad launched a journey that took her north to Alaska. On the way, she forged friendships, lived her dream, and discovered the depths of her own strength and courage.

Before Alaska became a mining bonanza, it was a scenic bonanza, a place larger in the American imagination than in its actual borders. Prior to the great Klondike Gold Rush of 1897, thousands of scenic adventurers journeyed along the Inside Passage, the nearly thousand-mile sea-lane that snakes up the Pacific coast from Puget Sound to Icy Strait. Both the famous—including wilderness advocate John Muir, landscape painter Albert Bierstadt, and photographers Eadweard Muybridge and Edward Curtis—and the long forgotten—a gay ex-sailor, a former society reporter, an African explorer, and a neurasthenic Methodist minister—returned with fascinating accounts of their Alaskan journeys, becoming advance men and women for an expanding United States. In Darkest Alaska explores the popular images conjured by these travelers' tales, as well as their influence on the broader society. Drawing on lively firsthand accounts, archival photographs, maps, and other ephemera of the day, historian Robert Campbell chronicles how Gilded Age sightseers were inspired by Alaska's bounty of evolutionary treasures, tribal artifacts, geological riches, and novel thrills to produce a wealth of highly imaginative reportage about the territory. By portraying the territory as a "Last West" ripe for American conquest, tourists helped pave the way for settlement and exploitation.

Writer and fisherman Joe Upton recounts the stories of explorers of the past and seafarers of the present: the journey of a widow who solo-navigated a small vessel in the 1930s with her five children; the failed meeting of explorers Alexander Mackenzie and George Vancouver in 1793; the countless sinking of log barges, fishing craft, and passenger ships. 31 photos. 7 maps.

The bestselling, award-winning author of Bad Land takes us along the Inside Passage, 1,000 miles of often treacherous water, which he navigates solo in a 35-foot sailboat, offering captivating discourses on art, philosophy, and navigation and an unsparing narrative of personal loss. "A work of great beauty and inexhaustible fervor." —The Washington Post Book World With the same rigorous observation (natural and social), invigorating stylishness, and encyclopedic learning that he brought to his National Book Award-winning Bad Land, Jonathan Raban conducts readers along the Inside Passage from Seattle to Juneau. But Passage to Juneau also traverses a gulf of centuries and cultures: the immeasurable divide between the Northwest's Indians and its first European explorers—between its embattled fishermen and loggers and its pampered new class.

In this insightful account of her solo voyage in a sixteen-foot kayak, Jennifer Hahn vividly relates the ecstatic moments and terrifying predicaments of paddling against the wind through Alaska's Inside Passage. Hahn's adventures include dramatic encounters with animals and heartwarming experiences with coastal characters. Much more than a memoi...

Describes a three-month long expedition that began in Alaska and ended in Vancouver, Canada.