During our recent cruise through Alaska’s “Inside passage,” I turned on my GPS hiking trail tracking app on my phone. I was able to leave the app on throughout the trip although it got complicated when my phone got low on power or we lost internet contact.
I discovered the phone was getting the GPS signal no matter the quality or existence of an internet connection. When I had to re-charge the phone battery but was not near a power supply, I had to turn the phone off. During this time, the app wasn’ recording our position. When re-charged and on, the app would then assume a straight line from the point of shut-down to the point of power-on, hence the dramatic straight lines over land, and elsewhere, on the track.
Here is the detail of our travels from first port of call: Ketchikan, bottom right, to Skagway, top, and then the northern part of the return leg back south to Victoria and Seattle.
In the late 1890’s, gold was discovered in the Yukon. The easiest way to get there, which is not saying much, was to take a ship from civilization, such as Seattle or Vancouver, and head north through Alaska’s southeast fjords to a tiny outpost called Skagway, at the north end of the Taiya inlet.