Thursday June 20. This was my favorite day. We arrived early to Skagway and after breakfast we met the family on the train that takes you along the old mining route from the Yukon gold rush in the late 1890s. This is also the day we surprised my parents with commemorative t-shirts. We all wore them under our jackets and as the train was departing we all shouted happy anniversary and showed them our shirts. Some of the other passengers clapped with us, many were annoyed. We were annoyed that they were annoyed.
We pulled out shirts for them to wear too.
They thought it was super funny and that was the whole point. Later the conductor announced their anniversary for the whole train to hear. That was great.
We were super stoked for the 1.5 hour train ride to Canada and back.
Man, when we are away from our kids, our dorkiness just shines.
My nephew Peyton and his wife Marissa, strangers, more family in the rear of the car.
We could go out to the "porch" during the entire 1.5 hour ride. Alaska really is the last frontier.
I don't remember what I was doing but I thought I was funny.
Oh yeah, I'm doing a chugga-chugga choo choo dance.
I don't remember a lot of the narration of what we were seeing along our way so here's some pretty scenery without too much commentary.
I don't remember the name of this river but it's white from all the granite sand. I think it's called rock flour or granite flour.
So the train follows the old train route from the city of Skagway up to the gold mines. It was a busy trail and train line during the Yukon Gold rush in the late 1890s. The tour guide talked a lot about the fates of the miners and what life was like back then.
Aww, cute train.
Cute Jaana.
This is a waterfall. Alaska has a lot of waterfalls.
This is the track ahead right before we went through a tunnel. My kids love tunnels and it made me a little sad they weren't with me.
Another shot of the river and the shadow of the train. Artsy!
This is the new bridge.....
Because this is the old bridge.....
Workers on the old bridge in the winter could only work in 1 hour shifts because of the risk of frostbite.
This mountain looked like Timpanogos.
Is this photo upside down??
Here's another tunnel. There were two and since we went up and back on the same track we had
4 tunnel experiences. Trains and tunnels. Perfect pair.
I leaned out a little from the porch and faced the rear of the train to get this cool shot. About 5 minutes later the mountainside of rocks was so close I would have been smacked hard in the back of the head and knocked off the train and not seen it coming. Someone should have warned me. Still a sweet picture.
We crossed into Canada and looped around and came back down the canyon. It was such a gorgeous ride full of history all along the way like places that miners met tragic deaths. I love history and real train rides (unlike at the zoo) are rare for me so I was loving this relaxing, educational jaunt.
Here's the whole gang.
The
city town of Skagway has only one industry at that's tourism. Only 800 people live there year round but the city swells each travel season with tourguides, restaurant workers and shop owners.
I went inside or walked past nearly all the shops. Justin rested in the ship between excursions so I went souvenir shopping! I'm all about supporting Alaskan store owners and Alaskan-made goods so I had to go in and out a lot of stores.
Who's ready for a ocean raft adventure? This guy after a nap.
What made this excursion so fun was what we had to wear. I've never felt so cool and ridiculous and invincible.
I'm not sure if Justin was mentally preparing in this moment or what. He was probably coughing.
No one sports the waterproof life preserver jumpsuit like my mom. No one.
This is our tour guide explaining what we were going to do and see but I wasn't listening very well. I was too excited to sit horsey style on these seats.
If you got to sit in the front seats, it was a crazy fun ride. The bay was calm that day but when we hit any rough water, this thing bounced and got us laughing so hard. Plus the captain did lots of doughnuts, just for fun. I want an ocean raft.
That's my mom! She was such a good sport. You should have seen her face when they pulled out the suits.
I love this picture for the sole reason I didn't realize how funny I looked with the goggles on. We did not get wet at all since the water was calm. The goggles were to keep my eyes from watering. And for looking legit.
Here's the 7 of us that went on this excursion. Matt's family went to a eagle preserve and I think everyone else hung around town.
And our awesome guide. I don't remember her name but she was funny and informative.
I learned that pregnant female seals are roughly the height and weight of adult humans and give birth to 25 pound babies.
Quagga mussels. We hate them in our lakes around here but they're fine in their natural habitats. I also learned that the tide changes by 18 feet every day! That's a lot!
This is Great Falls or Grand Falls or something from across the channel.
And here it is up close.
I don't remember what this one was called. Alaska has a lot of waterfalls.
This day was also national bald eagle day and we saw like 5 of them. I learned eagles are foragers and eat just about anything and can digest anything.
And yet another waterfall. Alaska is over the top beautiful.
After that Justin and I went to a pub for a late lunch. I liked the wood sidewalks all through the town. It made me feel like I was in the Wild West.
And then we found a shady spot (it was 70 degrees!) to call the kids, bought a couple of shirts then headed back to the ship with hours to spare. Two big thumbs up for Skagway's excursion. I had so much more fun here because I wasn't exhausted or in fear like the previous two days.
After dinner I found our photos from formal night .Don't do what I did and take a photo of the photos the photographer took of formal night.
This is the Rhapsody Strings Trio that played in various locations on the ship and I really liked them. They were from Budapest which I want to visit some day and they sounded very European, like the music you'd hear while sitting at a café in Eastern Europe. We were the only ones in this bar this night so they took our requests. It was awesome.
After that we saw a group of family (one of the best parts of traveling with 22 people is running into them all over the ship) outside watching for latecomers running to the ship before it sailed away from Skagway. Everyone made it.
That evening and every evening we gathered in the Explorers Lounge for their nightly trivia game or gameshow. We can't run very fast but the Symes are full of useless information. We are really funny or we think we are funny but either way we had a lot of fun.
If we didn't know the right answer we just tried to be funny to get our answer read aloud by the host. What is the most romantic city? Detroit. Name an animal that is great to have but hard to keep? Mountain goat. What do men first notice about a woman? Childbearing hips.
After the gameshow was karaoke. After the first night I realized there were a half dozen people that get up every night so we didn't stay long.
And now photos of the sunset as we sailed out of Skagway. The summer solstice was the next day but we were at our farthest north point so I guessed this was as late a sunset we were going to see. This is 11:04 at night, about an hour after sunset.
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| That's yet again another glacier. There are a lot. Alaska is such a showoff. |
Friday June 21 Tracy Arm Fjord Super early that morning we arrived at the Tracy Arm Fjord and at the end of the fjord is Sawyer Glacier. I would have slept through seeing the glacier but Justin came back and got me up after he saw what was going on up top. He's so nice.
I took the following 5 photos through my binoculars so they're not great but I like how they show the texture.
After rotating the ship a few times for glacier viewing, we slowly made our way out of Tracy Arm Fjord. There was some gorgeous coastline and lots of mini icebergs.
We thought this was driftwood but it's just dirty ice.
I liked this little beached berg.
After that we ate breakfast and went back to bed. We really didn't do much that day. Justin's cold was keeping him down so he slept a lot. But that's okay because cruises are supposed to be lazy.
We saw a lot of whales this day. See how many you can spot in this 35 second clip.
Sarah left me a letter in my suitcase to open on the fifth day of the cruise. I took it upstairs to read it. She's so sweet. Justin had a similar note in his suitcase too.
Then I video called the kids and watched them at the bowling alley. They cracked me up and I missed them but it was so great to be able to see them thousands of miles away. Technology is great.
We stayed for karaoke again. A really bad singer would be up there but it would be so rude to leave during their performance so you tell yourself you'll get up when they're done but then someone else gets up and you decide to stay because maybe they'll be good. But then nope, they're not and you sit through another painful performance. And then it's been an hour and you vow never to go to karaoke again. Until the next night.
That night Justin captured these sweet shots as we sailed away from Alaska.
You can't help but feel really small in Alaska. First you realize how ginormous the earth is because it took days to get there. Then the sheer number of trees feel incomprehensible and you wonder if anyone has ever looked at
that specific tree before and if not then you must be discovering something new, even if it looks indiscernible from the other thousand trees on that mountainside. Then it just keeps going, and going. Peak after peak is so gosh darn spectacular that if one of them existed anywhere else it would be a huge tourist destination but instead it is nestled among its brothers and almost becomes ordinary. And then you look at a map and realize that you're only seeing a fraction of a fraction of the state. This is nothing. Alaska is incomprehensible and I am small but somehow I feel good about that. That there will always be something to amaze me.
Bye Alaska. May we meet again.
Up next, Victoria and more ship fun.
