Alaska Cruise – 05/13/11

Up early this morning as we arrived in Skagway early.

Today Patti, Carrie, and Patrick go on a float trip, Jenn and I take a train ride. My folks talked about this train on one of their trip. Jenn and I were on the Yukon Suspension Bridge, City and White Pass Railway adventure

On the way out of Skagway, we passed a cemetery. All of the headstones are posted on Find-A-Grave. If we have time at the end of the tour, I may go back and take some closer pictures.

Everywhere you go, there are stories. The cemetery is one of them. About a gun battle between 2 gentlemen, both were killed in the gun fight, one is buried within the boundary of the cemetery and the “bad guy” is outside.

As we climbed the mountains, we ran into more snow. We made two stops, both of which passengers got off to take a “hike” up to one of the nearby (miles away) Glaciers.

A couple of tunnels, round some curves, over some not so new bridges, and looking “over the side” it was a very steep drop down into the valley below. We continued to hear the stories of the “gold rush”.

The higher we got, the more snow we saw. You could reach out the window or on one of the platforms of the train and you could touch the snow and you had to look UP to see how high the snow was. We would later hear that there was about 6 inches of snow the night before.

We stopped, in Canada, in Frazer. Population 13. The population walks to work at the border crossing.

Back to the bus that took us from the Disney Wonder to the train, and now on up to the Yukon Suspension Bridge. Wondering what the bridge was there, it had the answer to the question “Why did the chicken cross the road?”. The suspension bridge was over a gouge, so the bridge was to get to the other side.

The land in the other side had been a place for trapping, but that hasn’t happened for 100 years. The river below will start to pick up in a couple of weeks it will become a category 5 rafting spot.

The “Welcome Center” and gift shop was built-in the tradition of Canada, that is Open Hands. The building was in two pieces, with the open hands welcoming visitors to the suspension bridge.

Time to start back to Skagway.

Lots of snow, roads clear, but beautiful. Stopped at the summit of the mountain (3,200+ feet). Re-entered Alaska and stopped to take a Welcome to Alaska sign.

The road down the hill was on the far side of the train tracks that we took up to Frazier. On we way up, we were told that the difference between driving a car or riding a bus up the mountain is that the Train does not stop to take pictures of the Buses.

Back to ‘sea level’, Jenn and I had lunch at the Red Onion in Skagway and walked around town. All of the stores seemed to be selling diamonds.

We caught up with Patrick, Carrie, and Patti. Just hung out in town. No rush to get back to the ship, but don’t want to be late.