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.

Mendenhall Glacier

While in Juneau, we also visited the Tongass National Forest where we saw the Mendenhall Glacier.



The glacier was big and beautiful, and surprisingly blue. (Perhaps not surprising to others, but I didn't know how blue glacier ice is.)

We did the short and very easy Nugget Falls trail.

Despite the warm clothes, it was spring in Alaska, and the flowers were in bloom.

At the end of the trail we saw the Nugget Falls. Waterfall plus glacier plus mountain backdrop made for some awe inspiring scenery.

Also great rocks for scampering!

We ended our visit to the park with the obligatory photos of various combinations of people in front of the glacier.

Whales!

No burying the lede on this one. We saw humpback whales!

We went on a whale watching trip out of Juneau, trading the big cruise ship for a much smaller and faster boat.

Captain Jack was straight out of central casting. We were told that he pioneered whale watching trips back in the 90's and that he's the best at finding whales. My rational brain may suspect there is no causal link between grizzled appearance and whale locating prowess, but just like a fancy label increases one's actual enjoyment of a bottle of wine, I have no doubt that Captain Jack increased our actual enjoyment of this excursion.

These sea lions were the first big animals we saw. They would usually qualify as the main attraction of any nature outing, but this one had bigger things ahead.

Environmental regulations prohibit boats from approaching closer than 100 yards. The strategy is to find an area with lots of whale activity, get as close as you can, then park and hope they come to you. We were incredibly lucky that a pod of four humpbacks surfaced about 15 feet from our boat.
 

They were close enough that we could see their blowhole muscles expanding and contracting.

Blowhole, hump, then tail. We never saw the whole whale at once, so even this close it was still hard to wrap your head around just how large these animals really are.

We were also lucky that while we were waiting on the whales, there was a group of really active sea lions very close to our boat. Again, it's hard to believe that these were not the most amazing animals we saw on our trip.

These photos are all Aaron's but Juniper was also documenting the trip.

 

She was a delightful mix of amazed, inspired, and content after we saw the whales. Her goodwill bubbled over into extra snuggliness.

Lucky to see such amazing animals and lucky to share the experience with family.