vacation Thursday (Aug 18): Skagway

I woke up too early, but around my normal time of a bit before 5am. Today we were in Skagway. Today

the weather was beautiful! It had originally called for a light rain, but there was no rain, no clouds, and

even a bit of sun.

Due to a recent mountain slide, we had to go ashore via tender. We’re one of the lucky Princess cruises

that still gets to stop in Skagway; most of them for the month have been rerouted to Sika. (I’m sure

there’s nice things there too though.) We were going on a train ride up a mountain where the gold rush

path was. The train was right by the pier, so it was a quick hop-on. It was beautiful...so here's a picture overload.

Back of the train

Saw-tooth mountains

Into a tunnel!

At the turn-around in British Columbia

Another glacier

So while the port side of the train was definitely more beautiful with wide landscapes and soaring mountains, the port side on the way back was still very interesting.  All the rain caused lots of little waterfalls, and it turns out that I love waterfalls.  We probably saw one at least every minute or two.

We took a brief stop in town for more shirts, picked up some rocks from a creek for our rock -loving son, and walked back to the boat. After lunch we rested, but there were several helicopters making the

rounds to deliver cargo. One looked like two bombs. One looked like a giant roll of toilet paper. One

was a shopping bag with a box in it. Needless to say, we couldn’t come up with any reason that

helicopters should be used instead of trucks, but I’m sure there was one.

Rock slide area that caused us to use the tenders:

We had dinner at a different table that was right next to a window as we were leaving Skagway. Our

table is usually quite good, but it isn’t right next to a window. It was weird though because Ben and I

couldn’t see the same things at the same time due to the thickness of the window, the curtains, and the

table location. I’d say, “look at this cool waterfall!” and by the time he could see it it was out of my

view. It made for some difficult conversations, to say the least. Anyway, we wanted a table by the

window because we were in a fjord. (A fjord has steeper sides than a valley and has seawater and glacial water.)  The sides were pretty steep at the beginning but became normal mountains after an hour or so. After dinner we sat on our balcony to continue watching the scenery and reading. We saw one glacier, and even saw one of the officers taking pictures of it. It made us wonder if we had really good weather and that the mountain peaks were normally covered in fog.

We didn't get many (any?) room pictures, so this might be the best.

After dinner we sat on our balcony for a bit with blankets until it got too cold.

Both of us took some pictures through binoculars, but it's rather tricky.

The bridge took a small portion of our view away.  We were a bit annoyed, but nothing we can do about it.

We did try to see the northern lights again, but it was cloudy. 

In other news, today was the day the quilt show started!  I got a few pictures of my quilt.