Skagway, Friday June 29

Our ship arrived in Skagway, AK this morning about 630 am. We were waking up and looking out our window and getting ready to go on our first hike ashore (we'd been walking around the deck the past couple of days for an hours or so a time).We took a hike that I'd read about online from the ship all the way through Skagway to the Gold Rush Cemetery and on up to Lower Reid Falls. It took about three and a half hours including stops at several souvenir shops on the way back.







I bought a $4 cap (because all of mine were packed for Kansas and I couldn't find one to bring with me) and I didn't buy a piece of Tanzanite jewelry although I did stop at a jewelry store and ask the sales people to tell me about Tanzanite (and briefly worried Tommy I think).

Looking out over the Skagway river.



Heading up to the falls.



Reid falls



A nice big seat to rest on on the way down.



Wildflowers.



Tanzanite was discovered in the mountains in Tanzania in the mid twentieth century and has been increasingly prized and collected ever since. They estimate that there is about three or four years worth yet to be mined giving it the potential to increase considerably in value (according to the nice salesman, Rick). Nevertheless, I controlled myself and we didn't "invest" in any Tanzanite today.

This afternoon we lazed around on the ship reading and looking out at the activity in port. There's another cruise ship here, one of Princess's ships as well as a ferry called the Malaspina which I think is one of the ferris that travel up and down the panhandle of Alaska transporting people and goods. Lots of the ports in the panhandle are accessible by air and sea but not by road so the ferries do a good bit of business. We watched one this afternoon that was loading people and vehicles. We saw about 25 or 30 vehicles drive on to the ferry including a bicycle, a motorcycle, lots of cars, and a huge RV. This, I think, is how my sister would like to travel in Alaska!

Finally, we ended up back on our balcony with a glass of wine looking at the cliff that's painted with ship names and captains and the dates they first called at the port of Skagway. I loved this cliff when I first saw it in 1993 and I still love it.



Here's Tommy pointing to the one that's for our ship.