***FULL DISCLOSURE*** I’ve been uploading the videos from our train ride to YouTube for a few days now. It takes time to upload all these things to YouTube on a 5G connection. Then, I have to wait for YouTube to process all the videos. Then, I have to take the time to embed the videos into a blog post and publish it. That’s why I pulled this post back; I realized I didn’t have the full picture of Skagway without the videos. Again, you just have to go to Alaska and see the natural beauty for yourself. None of the photos or the videos I have here do it any justice.
***DISCLAIMER*** I’m not a video editor. I don’t have those skills or the patience to do that. Maybe if I had nothing else going on, I could devote the time to that skill so all the embedded videos on this post would look better and all be cut together in a nice collage, but I’m not that guy right now. You’ll just have to take what you get with this post. Enjoy.
Our second port visit in Alaska was in the town of Skagway. This was the furthest north we would travel and the town I most wanted to visit.
I’d read a lot of Jack London when I was a kid and I became enamored with the stories of the Klondike gold rush. I’d always wanted to see The Golden Staircase, the path that the stampeders took to get to the Yukon territory. I found out after we got to the area that The Golden Staircase is closer to Dyea, Alaska than it is Skagway. The White Pass & Yukon Route is in Skagway.
We started off the day as we had the day before, standing on the balcony watching as the ship pulled into port. Once the ship was moored, we saw a family of otters in the water below our balcony. They were swimming and playing and we saw them catch something to eat. Suddenly, the otters all dived under the water and they didn’t come back up. We waited for a time, but the otters never came back to the surface. As we continued to watch, a Bald Eagle flew directly over top of where the otters were. It either wanted to share their snack or turn them into snacks. I managed to capture the whole thing on video.
Walking around Skagway
We left the ship and started walking towards town.
Walking around Skagway was slightly disappointing; it’s very touristy. Almost every place we went into was a shop filled with tchotchkes and bric-a-brac that was made in China or Indonesia. One woman we spoke to said she was from Georgia and only came up to Alaska for the tourist season, then went home during winter.
The best places have historical facts, figures, and memorabilia in them. We found one as you can see from the pictures, and we found a bookstore that had a lot of books about the history of the area. Those were definitely more our speed.
I recommend this book if you’re interested in the Yukon and the Gold Rush.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53474108-the-streets-were-paved-with-gold
I’m reading it right now and it is fascinating. The best part is that there are a lot of pictures of the area from the time of the gold rush and more recent ones so you can see how the area changed over the years.
As it turns out, Skagway was a boom town. It didn’t exist before the gold rush. After a couple of guys found a yellow colored metal in the bottom of a creek bed, it became the jumping off point for almost all the stampeders hin search of their fortunes. When the gold rush ended three years later, the town almost dried up. If the White Pass & Yukon Route Rail Road wasn’t there, it would have. The railway transported ore from the mountain to the ships docked in Skagway that would take the ore to a refinery. The Army took over the railroad for a time during World War II until they abandoned it in the 1980s. Then, the town reinvented itself again as a tourist destination. That’s why the town is so touristy; if it hadn’t reinvented itself several times over, it would have disappeared forever. I’m glad it didn’t; I learned so much about the gold rush and the area while we were there.
Back to the boat
We went back to the boat for a little rest before our excursion to on the railroad. When we got back to our stateroom, we had a new animal friend.
The White Pass & Yukon Route
The train tour in Skagway is a must. If you ever get the chance to go, you have to do this tour. The train takes you out of Skagway, up to the top of the mountain, and just inside British Columbia before turning around and making its way back down. There are several tunnels and a trestle that the train must cross to get to the summit. The railway is a narrow gauge, so it rocks back and forth a bit, and some of the heights are harrowing, but I made it up and back, so can you. The tour guides on the railway are knowledgeable and talk about the history of Skagway, the railway, and the gold rush. They were very good about letting us know when it would be time to get some good pictures, but we took video instead to get all of it.
Underway again
After our excellent train excursion, we went back to the ship and went to our favorite spot, the solarium. We hung out in the hot tub and pool, we had a few drinks before dinner and watched as the ship got underway. We tried to see as many waterfalls as we could as the ship steered south.
Dinner time
We had a fabulous dinner at Chops Grille, the signature steakhouse onboard Royal Caribbean ships. I started dinner with lobster bisque, a crab cake, then a steak that was so good, there wasn’t a morsel left when I was done.
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