We woke up, docked in Skagway, AK. This was the farthest point north we have ever been. We were closer to Russia than to our families! That’s a weird feeling!
We took a quick stroll down the main street through town, which is, of course, loaded with gift shops. It’s neat little town, though.
Snow blower train:
The front of this building is covered entirely with driftwood!
Based on the other towns we visited in Alaska, we made it a point to not spend too much time in the gift shop area. We hadn’t booked a train ride through White Pass, which is THE big thing to do in Skagway, because it was a six hour trip and we thought the boys would get bored with it. Also very expensive!
Instead, we decided we wanted to do some hiking and get a real feel for what Alaska is like in the wild, and this was our last chance to do it since this was our last port of call. I wanted to hike to a place called Smuggler‘s Cove that can be a good tidepooling place. It was only about a mile round trip.
So, off we went!
The scenery was so beautiful! It was tons of fun, even though it was raining. It was a more realistic feel for how the weather usually is here, and it felt so good to be away from the crowds!
Carla and I were very aware of the possibility of bears, which made us a little nervous the whole time. Of course, I didn’t have a gun or bear spray! We were singing songs with the kids and making lots of noise as we hiked! I was constantly looking in the distance and around every corner for any kind of movement! Thankfully, we only saw squirrels.
On our way to the cover, we stopped at Yakutania Point, which we could see from our balcony on the cruise ship (which you can see in the third photo from the top of this blog post).
Lots of granite down near the water:
Such a beautiful trail!
In this next video, you can tell we didn’t tell the kids much about the risk of bears. At the very end of the video, Avin hears me mention it and turns around quickly. So funny!
Here’s the cove we hiked to. The tide was in too far to do any tidepooling, but it was a really neat view. We only saw two other people there, so pretty quiet. We had fun turning over rocks looking for crabs, but didn’t find any.
While we were there, I found a really cool piece of driftwood that we brought back as a real souvenir! Here it is in a later photo, starting to dry out a little:
We then headed back to the ship. In the satellite image below, the red pin is where Smuggler’s Cove is located. The cruise ship is across the bay in the lower right corner where the blue man icon is located (not the blue dot which shows where I was standing when I took the satellite snapshot).
Pretty wet outside! I think that made it more fun! Glad we all had rain jackets and hiking boots.
More gorgeous scenery on our way out of Skagway. I spent a lot of time staring through binoculars at the shoreline, hoping to see a bear or a moose where the land was a little flatter, but all I ever saw was a bald eagle (still neat!).
