π
2019-09-17 01:01
in Ak2019, Ntrips, Trips
|
Our first land excursion on the cruiseship was Skagway. There were plenty of things to do there, but sadly I was not able to secure a spot on the earlier tour before it sold out, so we wasted our time getting up early, showing up at the early tour at 07:00, not getting, and then walking in town while everything was still closed and only catching 30mn at the visitor center after it opened at 08:30, running back to the ship for the later 09:15 tour. Cruiseships and excursions suck, but in this case it felt difficult to find a tour that offered all of this, and late in the season when many tours were shut down for the year already:
nice and quiet, everything still closed
checking the different houses that you are supposed to be able to visit when they are open (which they only were while we were on our tour)
The visitor center eventually opened, so we had a very quick look at their museum before we had to run out (frustrating). It mostly explained how the early prospectors had to go through one of very two difficult routes from Skagway to Whitehorse to get to the gold prospection fields they were trying to reach, and how the canadians required them to have one ton of supplies to last the winter or would not let them in:
the rich people were able to go around via boat only
We then started our tour which went by bus to Canada:
Scenery was beautiful:
I climbed up a hill for this winning shot
We eventually got to Chilkoot in Canada for some touristy stuff. Sadly, like everything, it was super rushed;
it sucked for people who had to get there on foot before the train was there
They had a really good taxidermy collection:
They also had a small petting farm. Corny but still fun :)
friendly animals :)
We did the sled dog tour, which kind of a joke. They dragged an ATV on half power:
More time in Carcross:
More awesome scenery on the way, yeah for fall colors:
And then it was finally time to take the train back down:
one of the 2 trails up
is that what 'bridge to nowhere' means?
Eventually we got back to town at 17:30 when everything that mattered, was closed:
We then got back to our cruiseship, disappointed that we missed everything in Skagway. We could have used a 2nd day to see what was in town, but the ship doesn't wait. |
