Goodbye Alaska

Activities on board

The top deck of the ship had a sports area, with basketball courts, a climbing wall, ping pong tables. And mini-golf.

It was pretty surreal to be playing mini-golf on a boat with Alaskan mountains in the background.

The FlowRider was another attraction on the sports deck. It creates a continuous wave for body boarding or surfing.

Rebecca, the most athletic in our crowd, was the first to try it out.

Aaron later joined in on the fun.

Juniper just met the height requirement and gave it a try.

She quickly wiped out and was a little scared and overwhelmed by the experience.

But she tried again, with more success the second time. She had a blast and was proud of her accomplishment.

It's possible that having a room service breakfast one morning caused almost as much excitement as anything on the sports deck. It was crowded, and there was nowhere to put anything, and the kids absolutely loved it.

Tracy Arm Fjord

One of the highlights of our cruise was sailing up the Tracy Arm Fjord. What do you know, a there's a reason fjords are known for being some of the most remarkable landscapes on earth. I could easily repeat the word beautiful and its synonyms for every photo in this post, but I'll try to restrain myself and let the pictures speak for themselves.

We often arranged the seating so that the kids had their backs to the window. At breakfast they were generally more interested in the rare excitement of playing with individual size cereal boxes than in the scenery.

The fjord ended at the Sawyer glacier.

Not actually tire tracks, although the pattern definitely suggested it.

I had no idea there was so much color variation in ice.

This is about all the adults wanted to do for the few hours that we were in sight of the glacier and passing through the fjord.

See all those little black dots on the ice? At first, that's all we noticed...

...but with binoculars we could see that each dot was a seal!

Skagway

Skagway is a tiny bit of town tucked in between the shore and the mountains. It was a big gold rush town, and today the entire main drag is part of the Klondike Gold Rush National Park. All these tourist shops are renting space from the National Park Service.

Over a decade ago, Aaron heard the fun fact that Alaskans eat more ice cream per capita than any other state. Ever since then, eating ice cream in Alaska has been on his personal bucket list.

Quite a difference between the restored main street and this street just one block away.

 

And here's what we found just behind that street.

I wasn't kidding when I said that Skagway is tiny--wildflowers less than a 5 minute walk from the main tourist street.

This chimney is all that remains of a once-prominent boarding house that helped to establish Skagway as a tourist destination decades ago.

"What is that -- some kind of drill?"

"No, it's a 27-ton rotary snow plow." Skagway is also a historic railroad town, and I guess they couldn't mess around with snow on the tracks. This snowplow was built in the late 1800's and retired in the 1960's. Always read the plaque.

These last two photos are actually from Juneau, but I accidentally put them with the Skagway photos. The Red Dog Saloon was founded during the gold rush days and definitely plays up its old timey feel. There's sawdust on the floor, rough wood, and lots of taxidermy on the walls.

Also Wyatt Earp's gun.

Chilkoot Trail

More than 100 years ago Klondike gold rush miners followed the Chilkoot trail to get from the Alaskan coast to the headwaters of the Yukon river, in British Columbia. Today, the 33-mile trail is maintained by the US and Canadian National Parks Services. We hiked about 2 miles of the trail from it's start in Dyea (an abandoned gold rush town near Skagway).

The forest was beautiful and unbelievably mossy.

Berry season was just starting when we were there. Our guide told us that two of these baneberries on the devil's club bush can kill an adult.

But these watermelon berries are perfectly safe and do in fact taste slightly of watermelon. We definitely checked with the guide before eating any unknown berries!

In addition to letting us know which berries were safe to eat, the guide had all sorts of interesting information about the history and ecology of the area. This tree was the most interesting single fact we heard. When a brown bear wants to mark his territory, he'll rub all over the tree to get his scent on it, and then stretch as high as possible to scratch the tree with the two claws of his longest fingers. Another bear entering the territory can reach up and compare how high his own claws reach. If higher, then the new bear can move in and start encroaching on the territory. If lower, then the new bear knows he needs to keep moving and find somewhere else.

We ended our hike at the Taiya river and took a raft back to our starting point.

Everyone in our group for this particular adventure: Rebecca (Aaron's sister), Sally, Janet (Aaron's mother), Aaron, Juniper, and Hazel.

Hazel was slightly disgruntled about having to wear pink kiddie galoshes instead of the grown-up river boots everyone else got, but she didn't let that diminish her excitement about stomping in the water's edge.

Even through the boots, you could feel how cold the water was. No surprise, given that it's glacier run-off, but still very cold. Also clean, clear, and drinkable.

Kudos to the girls for being great companions on the hike and the float. They were engaged, excited, asked lots of questions, and followed all the safety guidelines. Juniper in particular spent most of the hike away from her family and attached to Mr. Brian, the guide, talking about the forest and her love of nature.

Aaron came equipped with two cameras -- the one around his neck and the one someone else was using to take this photo. (In case my teasing sounds unkind, let the record state that I deeply appreciate the fact that we have all these fantastic photos without any effort on my part.)

It was a relaxing and peaceful float, with stunning views in every direction: snow-capped mountains, forest-covered mountains, glaciers in the distance, trees close up.

No bird in this picture, but this is a bald eagle's nest. We saw lots of them-- in forests, on streetlights, above the garbage dump...

Rebecca's big smile pretty much sums up how we were all feeling on the raft. The 40 minute float was over way too quickly.

Two girls with hot chocolate and someone in an orca costume

There were some odd things on the boat.

All dressed up

A couple of days before our departure, we realized that we're supposed to dress up for dinner on the ship. This threw us into a bit of a packing tailspin and led to a few moments of completely unwarranted grumpiness. But when it came time to dress for dinner, I think we polished up real nice.

To be clear, it was only the adults who were grumpy.

Hazel was especially thrilled to wear her new suit.

She and Luke made an adorable pair.

We bribed them to let us take a bunch of smiling photos by promising to take a few silly photos at the end.

So dapper.

Once again, Juniper didn't make it till the end of dinner.