Our final shore stop took us to the old Yukon port town of Skagway. We were in this port until 8:30 in the evening, so we made sure to make the best of our time. Instead of being suckered into spending even more time and money in the plethora of jewelry stores, we booked 2 guided excursions that day. Our first activity was at a dogsled and musher's camp. Here a group of racing snow dogs led us around in a golf cart which helps the pups keep active during the summer months when there's no snow for pulling sleds. They told about the training the dogs undergo for racing and how most dogs these days are mixed breeds of both husky and grey hound to produce the fastest cold weather racers.
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| Here are the pups leading our cart |
They could even point out to us which dogs were related and how long it takes them to move up the doggie race chain. The doggie leaders are at the front and the youngest and newest dogs were at the back. They were such happy and playful dogs. The minute they got harnessed up, they just wanted to start running.
After the ride, they showed us all over the camp. I really appreciated seeing where the dogs lived and how they're cared for. We also got to meet two litters of puppies. They had 6 week old pups and 9 week old pups. So adorable! Then, we loaded back into the van and departed back to the cruise ship. It took us about an hour to drive from the port out to the musher camp. It was a shame that we had to waste a full hour driving all the way back because our afternoon excursion took us right back to the same location. The drive was at least scenic albeit repetitive.
The musher camp morning excursion went from about 8AM-11AM and cost $250 for the two of us. I still shake my head at the cost of these excursions. Our afternoon activity didn't call for us until 1:00, so after a quick lunch on the boat (can you guess where? Our favorite...the 24 hour buffet) we walked around the town a little bit. Between Ketchikan and Skagway, Skagway seemed more established. We enjoyed learning about the history of the place from our drivers.
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| "downtown" Skagway |
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| Yukon Express |
At 1:00, we met our driver who took us the 1-1.5 hours back out to the wilderness for our afternoon adventure of horseback riding. The last time we went horseback riding was on our trip to
Yosemite National Park in California. We had such a great experience, that we were glad they had a horseback riding opportunity on the cruise. For the
bargain price of $338 for two people, we enjoyed an hour long trail ride through some beautiful forests and plains.
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| Meeting our horses and guide |
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| Some of the views we saw on horseback |
Like in
Juneau where we contacted the actual helicopter company to book our glacier experience directly through them, we tried to do the same thing for our horseback ride. Instead of offering us a lower rate, they flat out told us that the cruise ship business is their livelihood. If they give us a discount and undercut the cruise ship, they would be black listed by the cruise ships and go out of business. It was such a shame to hear this.
On the ride back to the cruise ship after horseback riding, the other folks with us asked to be dropped off at other points in the town. After they did that, my husband and I ended up being alone in the van with our local driver. We started asking her all sorts of questions about the cruising industry and about the local people who lived in Skagway. I said above that Skagway seemed like much more of an established town. We drove through neighborhoods and passed a school.
Ketchikan was literally just a single street or two of shops. We never saw any other sign of civilization. Still, Skagway had the same jewelry store lined streets, and we frankly asked our driver what the deal was. She laughed and said, "I could probably get fired for telling you this, but the cruise ships all own the jewelry stores." Of course! Now it made so much sense! The lectures during our first day at sea...it all became clear. Then she went on to say that although all of the cruise ships are operated by different companies, the ships themselves are mostly owned by a single parent company, so between the multiple cruise lines, they all share in the same proceeds from cruisers who shop at these stores. These stores are the same as those in the various Caribbean ports though the island cruisers have more options for spending their time outside of the excursions planned by the ships. I said before that the ships have corned the Alaska cruising market, and now that we knew why, we were pretty disgusted with the whole industry.
The next two days were "scenic" cruising days. Our first scenic cruising day was spent in Glacier Bay, and the second day was spent in the College Fjord. These two days, I was especially glad we had a balcony room. The cruise ship had set up lounge chairs with blankets and binoculars on one of the upper decks, and we could reserve them for the two days of scenic cruising...for a modest fee, of course. Instead, we pulled our comforter off the bed and wrapped it around us as we sat on our balcony watching the glaciers go by.
I will say this about our two scenic cruising days. They were horribly boring. After seeing the Mendenhall glacier in Juneau, all of the other glaciers we saw were less impressive. And we spent the next two days seeing glacier after glacier after glacier. While glaciers are neat, and I've never seen a glacier since then...I was glaciered out by the time we were done. On our last day of scenic cruising, we even went to an art auction on the ship because we were so bored. That's not to say we didn't enjoy some of it. We did spend several hours in our cabin each day watching the scenery go by, but each day we were only in glacier-viewing range for a short amount of time. The rest of the day was just open water. Here are some of the things we saw on those two days.
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| Glacier |
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| Another glacier |
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| a birdie squabble on a floating iceberg that amused us for a while |
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| Harvard Glacier in the College Fjord |
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| more College Fjord glaciers |
Our last day of vacation finally arrived. We sailed from Vancouver up to Anchorage. We disembarked at 9:30AM and had a 5PM flight. The cruise port dropped us off a little bit of a distance from the airport, so we signed up for one last shore excursion that also included our airport transfer.
For $278/for two we signed up for the Portage Glacier Cruise & Wildlife Center. When we signed up for these shore excursions a few months before the trip, how could we have known how sick of glaciers we would be by that point? I'm not even going to bother showing you a picture of the Portage Glacier. Look up. It looks a lot like those. Haha.
I did thoroughly enjoy the Wildlife Center, however. The Wildlife Center rescues animals who are orphaned or injured. They have a multi-thousand acre reserve where they can still let the animals life without a cage. There were definite barriers protecting us from this brown bear, but I appreciated how well they were cared for.
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| Rescued grizzly bear who had been orphaned at birth |
From the Wildlife Center, we took the scenic route to the airport and passed a migrating bunch of beluga whales. Arriving at the airport in plenty of time for our 5pm flight, we found some over-priced airport food for dinner, and before too long, took off on our red-eye flight back to the East Coast. We landed at 6AM and faced a full day of jet lag.
Well friends, I hope you enjoyed my Alaskan adventures. Even if cruising wasn't for us, lots of people enjoy this method of traveling. You get to cover a great bit of ground without worrying about transportation. Although after Alaska, I swore I would never take another cruise again, there are cruises out there that sound very appealing to me like a cruise that hops between the islands of Hawaii, or one that goes between Greek Islands and Turkey. Maybe some day I'll take what I've learned from our cruise to Alaska and turn it into more rewarding cruise experience.
This isn't to say that all Alaska cruising is bad or that even Princess Cruising is bad. Princess simply caters to an older crowd, and we felt that the ship lacked many entertaining things to do. My in-laws took my two nieces on a Disney Cruise to Alaska and simply raved about it. They said there were tons of things to do on the ship for both the kids and adults. Understand that the cruise ships have an ulterior motive for taking you to certain ports of call, and as long as you go knowing about their hidden agenda, you're likely to have a better time than we did.
So, after spending a few weeks in the United States going to San Francisco, Yosemite, Seattle, and Alaska, I'll be heading to the Far East for my next blog segment. In 2012, my husband and I spent two absolutely incredible weeks touring the island of Japan. If you think you're too timid of a traveler for an adventure like Japan, read my posts. If I can do it...so can you!!
Thanks for reading!
- Foxy the Traveler
