Alaska Cruise – Part 6 – Skagway

Day 4 – Skagway

The Skagway day in port was our first actual stop in Alaska. As our activity for the day, we had booked a Disney excursion into the Yukon Territory from Skagway. The tour involved taking a bus into the Yukon, followed by a ride on the White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad back into Skagway. The bus tour had a few scheduled stops along the way, which we thought would help break things up for the kids. The railroad had gotten pretty good reviews, so we were excited about that as well.

One thing that Disney is good at (and maybe all cruise lines are) is getting people organized for excursions. You are given tickets the night before your excursion that tell you exactly where to meet. I don’t recall where we met on the ship, but we were soon headed off the ship following someone with a famous Disney character on a paddle. They got us loaded up on the bus and we were off.

The bus driver started driving through Skagway and up into the mountains. As he passed through the town, he explained the history of the town and what led to the Klondike Gold Rush that made the town famous. What amazed us most about the terrain was how much it changed as we drove. It went from almost a rain forest, into rocky mountains devoid of trees, into boreal forest, into scenes that looked like they were right out of the moon. I’ve always had an interest in geology and the trip definitely was amazing.

Unfortunately, since we were on a bus, all the beautiful scenery en route (minus stops) was viewed through windows. So, I’ll apologize for the pictures in advance.

We stopped briefly at the Canadian border and had our passports checked. (There’s a small building at the border with a Canadian Border Patrol agent who boarded the bus for the purpose of checking the passports.) Once cleared, we continued up into the Yukon. Our first stop was at Tagish Lake, home of Bove Island. We got off the bus to take a look around and take some pictures. The third photo below gives a good view of the island. Our bus driver told us a story about canoeing with some friends to spend the night camping on the island — he said, “it’s closer than it looks.” (Apparently it had taken them much longer to boat over and set up than they’d anticipated, and they only got a couple of hours’ rest before they had to return back across the lake).

After several minutes, we re-boarded the bus and moved onto the Carcross Desert. It was described to us as the world’s smallest desert, but its just a series of sand dunes. It was really cool to see the glacial deposits there in the middle of the mountains. Not quite what you would expect.

We then moved to Caribou Crossing Trading Post. I can only really describe this as a tourist trap set up in a random Canadian field. It had a few buildings that are connected by covered walkways, including some museum-like exhibits about the area and wildlife. Of course, there was also a good sized gift shop. Our tour included lunch at the restaurant here, which served a barbecue chicken lunch. The lunch was mediocre, but satisfied everybody.

One of the draws of this place was the opportunity to do a sled dog ride, on a cart instead of a sled given the summer weather. We opted not to do this. We did visit with the sled dog puppies that had been advertised. The girls spent a little time petting them and then we grabbed some ice cream from one of the specialty cafes on site.

The bus loaded back up and we headed for Carcross, which was another small town. We spent a little bit of time walking around and got some cool drinks — it was an unseasonably warm day. Carcross was a combination of residences and small shops painted with native graphics, such as pictured below. Soon we were ready for the last portion of the tour, which was the train ride down.

We loaded back onto our tour bus and moved on to the railroad. The Disney tour we were on provided two reserved passenger rail cars to choose from. We held back a bit and got on the car that had less people on it. I was really glad we did. The passenger cars had large windows with great views of the scenery — but best of all were the outdoor platforms at each end of the car, which were great spots for taking pictures. We never had any competition for going out on the platform to take pictures. The railroad basically followed the route the miners took as they moved up into the Yukon territory. You could see the trail off to one side of the tracks at certain points in the ride.

We LOVED the train. The view was fantastic the entire way down — this selection of pictures we’ve included really does not do it justice. At every turn there are incredible vistas. We went over several bridges where you could look down as well and see down the valley. I would definitely do the train ride again in an instant.

We eventually arrived back in Skagway. We decided to walk around the town just a bit before heading back onto the ship. The building in the 2nd picture below was very interesting — it has a facade made entirely of pieces of driftwood, assembled in 1899 by a brotherhood of gold speculators and miners who had arrived in Skagway at during the gold rush.