Skagway

We spent the morning in Skagway catching up on the blog and enjoying some time on the verandah. We knew we needed to rest up for the afternoon’s Glacier Point Wilderness Safari! Skagway has a population of about 1200 year round and mostly caters to the tourist industry brought in by the cruise ships. We tendered over to the dock and boarded a small boat for our adventure.

The hour long ride out to Glacier Point was beautiful and we were kept entertained by stories told by our guide and the boat captain. Both are seasonal workers that work in Alaska during the summer season and then pick up jobs wherever they feel like going the rest of the year. The tour company has a staff of 18 living at Glacier Point for the season in dry cabins – no running water, no showers, and just a bit of electricity from a small generator. Depending on how busy they are they get to come back to Skagway roughly once a week to shower and buy supplies. She said they do become rather feral over the summer!

We arrived and after a very short opportunity to eat a turkey sandwich we were loaded on a rather ancient looking bus driven by a very enthusiastic young man who did quite a good job of getting us up a narrow, muddy, hilly road to the supply station. There we got to use some rather ripe pit toilets and were outfitted in rubber boots, life vests, and a canoe paddle.

Then we hiked what was billed as 1/4 of a mile but sure seemed a tad longer over rocks and tree roots and up and down and all kinds of things that made that paddle come in real handy as a big walking stick. That adventure took us to a beach with a number of canoes and some more semi-feral but really wonderful young people. We were taught the proper way to get in our canoe and we got to paddle for a bit before the “paddles up” command was ordered and we were powered over to glacier point.

This was our view of the Davidson Glacier from the small rocky beach.

The glacier is difficult to reach by land but the young ones have managed during their free time. It sounds like a pretty harrowing journey! The guides always offer to take pictures for everyone.

We did it all in reverse and got back on the boat to return to Skagway. The captain checked on our required departure times and detoured to give us an extra treat with a fun view of some sea lions