Alaska Cruise (Part 3 – Skagway)

After Juneau, it was off to the compact city of Skagway in southeast Alaska, which is set on the Inside Passage a popular cruise route. It’s home to gold-rush-era buildings, now preserved as part of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park. https://www.nps.gov/klgo/planyourvisit/visitorcenters.htm. The White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad runs vintage locomotives past the famously steep Chilkoot trail and offers sweeping mountain views during its climb toward Canada. In town, you get to step back in time and relive the Gold Rush. Streets lined with wooden “buckboard” sidewalks and restored buildings, whisk visitors 100 years into the past to a time when gold-crazed stampeders clamored to the Klondike to strike it rich. Back then, 20,000 miners filled this compact town, a stark comparison to the less than 1000 who call it home today. Skagway is a pure gem ensconced in between soaring mountains and located at the northernmost part of the Inside Passage. It is located at the end of the Lynn Canal, the deepest and longest fjord in North America. Skagway is considered the Sunshine Capital of Alaska; founder of Nordstrom spent 2 years here during the Gold Rush; in 1898 Skagway was the largest city in Alaska.

Our stop in Skagway began with some excitement early in the morning. We were getting ready for an all day tour, so I was upstairs getting coffee as the ship was docking. We were entertained with an early morning humpback whale show. Finally, we saw a whale tail!! Play the video below and you will too! (This video is best viewed in full screen, so click the icon at the lower right corner).

It’s not the best video because I was filming it through a window, but hey when you are in Alaska, you do what is necessary to see a whale tail!!

Next we were off to a full day of adventure. First stop was some of the sights of Skagway.

Then it was off for an amazing train ride though the White Pass trail. Before boarding, our guide provided some background on the gold rush and how the train came about. He asked us to consider what the people went through trying to get over the mountain pass with two thousand pounds of gear as we rode the train up the mountain. The railroad was built between May 1898 and July 1900, 35,000 workers had a hand, big and small, in connecting Skagway and Whitehorse. Unfortunately, 35 of them died in the process. Imagine workers hanging from rock faces by ropes, and the 450 tons of explosives it took to blast the line open, a good half of it just to get past Rocky Point at Milepost 6.9.

“Give me enough dynamite and snoose (chewing tobacco) and I’ll build you a railroad to hell,” contractor Michael J. Heney is said to have boasted.

Twelve miles out of Skagway, the train begins a huge horseshoe curve. You see Slippery Rock, a wooden trestle, a tunnel and the best perspective on the engineering wonder and grit it took to build this section of rail in the dead of the 1898–1899 winter.

The White Pass & Yukon Route has been designated an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, putting it in the good company of such landmarks as the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, and the Panama Canal.

In the lower elevations, most of the snow had melted.

As we headed up the mountain, the sights were even more spectacular.

We took the train into Canada then hopped back on our tour bus and headed into the Yukon Territory. (Click the arrows to scroll through the pictures)

Ok this I did not expect, a desert environment in the middle of the Yukon Territory? Who knew?

We arrived at our destination for some lunch and a visit with some sled dogs. Our guide explained that they no longer use the Husky breed for sled racing. Because they are looking for speed, they have begun to use crossbreeds that include greyhounds. You can see that in Chase, the dog that the handler is holding. (We had to take a picture of Chase, because Cole has a Black Labrador friend at home named Chase that he loves to play with at the dog park.)

After our bellies were full and we had a chance to hold some very cute sled dog puppies, we headed back to Alaska and to our ship. It was a long day, but well worth it!