Alaskan cruise trip report - Day 6 - Skagway

Skagway

I’m a wee bit of a planner. Okay, fine, I’m a huge planner. I spent countless hours planning this trip from excursions at ports, to hotels, to restaurants, what times to get up, times to be certain places, and more. There was a lot of planning. But I really love it. It’s part of the fun for me. I think it paid off, though and things went really well overall. We really didn’t deviate much from the plan at all. The plan for today was to wake up at 6:30, go to breakfast from 7:15-8:00 and then disembark at 8 to meet for our tour, booked privately with Chilkoot Charters at 8:15.

So we woke up at 6:30, ate breakfast at 7:15 and walked off the ship at 8:00 and there we were, ready to board the bus that would take us out of Alaska, into British Columbia and up to the Yukon territory. On the bus with us were the Jarretts as well as several other families from our Facebook cruise group. Skagway was foggy with drizzle. I’m sensing a theme, Alaska. The driver/tour guide of our little bus (it was more like a larger van type bus, you know a smallish bus thing), Mike, was really great. For about three and a half hours, we drove along the Klondike highway stopping about every 15-30 minutes at various points along the way (Google maps thinks it’s a two hour trip without stops). Mike was conscientious about stopping at points when other tours weren’t already there or trying to beat the train to the passport control officer for Canada so we could get through first.




Mike told us we would be climbing through three different climatic zones: rainforest, sub-arctic tundra and arctic tundra. He also said that as soon as we crossed the summit of the mountain and moved into Canada, the skies would be clear and sunny. I was dubious, but he was right. I wish we had known that before we set out because none of us had our sunglasses with us! Thankfully, we had short sleeves under our warmer clothes because it was actually really warm and beautiful!




We stopped at some amazing sights along the way both before and after lunch (more on that in a moment) including Bridal Veil Falls and a series of lakes that are actually one long lake that sort of changes names. Other points of interest included Bove Island, a large island in the chain of lakes, and Emerald Lake, which is a separate lake and so called because of the beautiful green color. We also stopped at the Carcross Desert, the Welcome to Yukon sign, and the small town of Carcross for a short stop.







The landscapes before us were amazing. I had never seen anything like that terrain before and it was just jaw dropping in it’s beauty. I don’t have the words to accurately describe it, but I’m really glad that we didn’t just take only the train, and took the bus as well because we really got to stop and take in the scenes, instead of passing everything by on the train. Don’t get me wrong, the train was awesome (I’ll get to that later) but the stops on the bus really allowed us to take in the incredible beauty of each place we passed through.



Our lunch stop, in the middle of all of this at around 11:30, was at a place called Caribou Crossing. After eating lunch (BBQ chicken for everyone else and a lentil curry for me), we had a summer dog cart ride scheduled at 12:15. We stopped on the way over to play with the puppies. After we successfully pried the puppy away from Emmaline (she was somewhat reluctant to part with her new fuzzy friend).



The dogs were extremely excited to run. They wanted to RUN NOW. And they knew the drill. As soon as a cart would come back, they knew which dogs were next to pull and they got extremely excited, barking and yapping and jumping. The dog cart ride was short (maybe 15 minutes), but a lot of fun. These dogs were in training and it was very interesting to see how the musher worked with them. She explained some of the commands and how they pair the dogs up. At one point she had to stop to rearrange some dogs that weren’t getting along. At one point along the way, the dogs stopped to have a break in some kiddie pools along the course so they wouldn’t overheat. In their shaded area waiting to get hitched up, they had water sprayers keeping the dogs cool.






After our ride, we headed back into the puppy area where Emmaline probably could have spent the rest of the day holding little puppies. But they had some other animals there including some goats, horses, and alpacas. They also had a large taxidermy museum with a lot of very impressive specimens.



After lunch, we had more stops. This includes some of the places I mentioned above. I honestly can’t remember which stops were before and which were after lunch. Eventually, we ended up back in Fraser, British Columbia to board the White Pass Railroad, I believe around 2:45 PM. We said goodbye to the Jarretts (they were taking the bus back) and boarded the train.



The train was also amazing and a lot of fun, but for different reasons. They provided us with a map and there was a running commentary so that we could learn more about the different places we were traveling through. We saw some of the same places on the bus, but from a different vantage point. Some of the places were different and the railroad hugged the mountainside so some of the vistas were incredible. As we passed back down into Alaska, we moved back into the foggy rainforest again and back to Skagway.







Mike was there with his bus and offered to take us back to the ship, but we declined and made the short walk through town, stopping at a few shops and points of interest along the way. As we were heading back to the ship, it began to rain in earnest and got windy and cold. There was a long line to board the ship and it took us quite awhile. Thankfully, once on board, we were met with a crew member handing out hot cocoa and cookies. Yes, please!!




We didn’t have much time before dinner so we went back to the room to download the photos to the computer and hang up all our outerwear. Emmaline also wanted to wear her Anna dress to dinner since it was Frozen night and we would be attending the Frozen deck party right after dinner. After another lovely dinner with our new friends (Emmaline and Katie had a great time at dinner each night) we went up to deck 9 to find a place to watch the show. It was already packed and Emmaline was cold so I ran back to the room to grab some pants for her to wear under her dress. I missed most of the show, but I did catch the highlight at the end in which they made it snow, which was actually a pretty cool effect.

After the Frozen show, we went back to the room to get things organized for the next day. We were pretty tired and there wasn’t a stage show that evening. Instead, the Walt Disney Theatre would be showing “Finding Dory.” We had already seen it so we skipped the show and just relaxed in our room. It felt nice to have an evening where we weren’t rushing around doing things. The sun was still up and we watched the world go by from the room while we prepared for the next day in Juneau before going to bed a little early.

Click here for Day 7.