Skagway

This post will have less pictures, so I'll take a minute to talk a little about the cruise experience.  Skagway, our last Alaskan town, is mainly a tourist town.  Hardly anybody really lives there  - most of the residents are there seasonally to cater to tourists.  There is a long train ride in Skagway that is very popular, and the cruise line people *really* sang the praises of the ride and highly encouraged everyone to take it.  Which brings up one subject of cruising that I haven't mentioned:  I think you have to have a filter.  Jeff and I were there to enjoy certain things about Alaska and about cruising.  We wanted a romantic getaway for our anniversary and birthdays, obviously.  But, we wanted to really see Alaska and enjoy the beauty of God's creation.  We wanted to enjoy yummy food without hunting for, or deciding between, restaurants.  We also enjoy live music and entertainment, and those are available on the ship, but not really important to us.  So, on the ship, we took advantage of some of the shows, and we really enjoyed the ones by the naturalist on board.  We tried all the different restaurants, and we enjoyed listening to the music.  We relaxed in the solarium a lot.  We used the gym…less than we had planned!  But, as I mentioned, we definitely used a filter to decide on our activities.  The cruise people encouraged expensive excursions like the train ride, and they really pushed other opportunities to spend money.  And not just in the casino, although there was a small one.  There were art auctions, boutiques for shopping on the ship, classes to take about shopping in the ports, classes to take about buying diamonds and watches…I could go on.  I suppose those things could have been super annoying, but we just filtered them.  We knew why we were on the cruise, we knew what we would enjoy, and we just didn't waste any mental or physical energy on the other stuff.

So anyway, we arrived in Skagway, and even though we had one day left in beautiful Alaska, we felt that we had already seen what we had come to Alaska to see.  We were totally satisfied with our experience.  I guess it's good that we were happy but still had more time there!  Also, we had low expectations for Skagway since we had heard that it was just a town mostly set up for tourists.  So, our expectations were low, and we decided to bypass the train and do some hiking and exploring on our own.  That's exactly what we did - two hikes, one on either side of the town, and lots of exploring in between.  It turned out to be a fun day with beautiful weather and great sights.  We had a great time in and out of Skagway.

We took a short hike up to Lower Dewey Lake.  We met a Canadian family there (if I haven't mentioned it recently, I should note that Jeff can talk to anyone and make friends anywhere) and they took our picture for us at the lake and then again at the creek.

When we were doing our research into Alaska, we looked online at other people's reviews and YouTube videos of their experiences.  We saw a lot of unusual mushrooms, and we wondered, "WHY the preoccupation with mushrooms???"  Well, it's so moist that there are lots of amazing and different kinds of mushrooms.  My favorite looked like a little yellow mushroom cake with white sprinkles.  Jeff took lots of mushroom pictures.  However, I am not going to post them here!

After the hike to Lower Dewey Lake, we tromped around town and went on another hike, this time to Reid Falls. (As I write, I keep thinking about the pictures and stories I'm leaving out.  But, that's what made these posts take so long in the first place:  the feeling that I needed to blog about the trip comprehensively.  And I just am not going to do it.  So, here I go again with a few snapshots.)  As I mentioned, Skagway is small, and the public school (which is beautiful!) supposedly has about 70 students, K-12.  Wow.  Also, I liked this Alaska flag garage.

And here's Reid falls.  The water is a bit murky because it's carrying silt and debris that the glacier picked up/scraped up.  That's also why our picture of the Mendenhall Glacier looked dirty:  from scraping against the rocks and picking up debris.

The falls were loud and gorgeous.  And since waterfalls are a big part of our meeting-and-marrying story, of course we loved visiting one more in Alaska.

We ate most of our meals in the dining room, meeting new people and enjoying great food from the ship's ever-changing menu.  But, on three nights, we tried the three fancier restaurants on the ship.  Jeff had read about visiting this one, the Italian restaurant, on the way out of Skagway.  I'm so glad we did! This was our favorite meal of the week, and our favorite view of the week, too.  We watched the sun set over Skagway and ate…oh, I can't describe the food.  It was so good!  

This was one of the many photos we took out the window over our table.  I mentioned that we had low expectations for our day in Skagway, but even if we had started with high expectations, our experiences would have been even better than we planned.  What a beautiful Last Day in Alaska.