Skagway was as far north as our cruise went--59 degrees 27 minutes north latitude, according to my GPS which fortunately matches the government's belief about where it is. (That's one of the nice things about facts based on universal, repeatable concepts. Imagine trying to find your way to Skagway if everyone's concept of reality was considered equally valid--and they didn't match.) What this meant was when we left that evening, even at 11:30 PM, there was still a considerable glow in the sky from the Sun--which was just below the horizon.
Here's the inlet from the ocean.
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And here is the back of some gorgeous redhead (my wife), admiring the quite steep cliffs of the fjord (for that is what it is). This gives you an idea of how steep the mountains are at Skagway.
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Here is most of Skagway--which shrinks down to about 160 people in winter.
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We were at first a little put off by the graffiti on the side of the mountain where our ship docked, even though one piece was guite artistic.
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There was an explanation of it on an historical plaque:
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Skagway is even more of a tourist destination than Ketchikan:
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The place has some history to it. This was the disembarkation point for the Yukon prospectors who went up and over Chilkoot Pass, on what became known as the Golden Staircase--which you have probably seen pictures of, such as this one. (There's a history of the Golden Staircase, and the human costs associated with it, here.) Unfortunately, the Golden Staircase was 14 miles up another valley, and not really accessible by car in the time that we had.
They had this rather odd front end on a locomotive in the center of town that at first I thought might have been used for drilling tunnels--but it was too small to allow the train to pass through.
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It turns out to be a snow plow.
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We signed up for a Gardens of Skagway tour, which wasn't expensive, nor a particularly investment of our time. The bus driver was the only redeeming virtue, since he was able to give us a bit of a history of the town, and a description of what it is like to live there during the tourist season. The town effectively shuts down for the winter, and only a hardy few artist sorts stay there. Skagway is very expensive--housing is scarce, and during the tourist season, many of the seasonal workers live in tents. Everything has to be brought in by barge, and so I paid $1.79 for a 20 ounce bottle of Coke. There is no doctor there; one flies in once a month to see patients.
Unlike Juneau, which has no road access to the outside world, Skagway does--but our driver explained that if you take the auto ferry to Haines, which is 14 miles away, you pay $80. You can drive to Haines--but it is 370 miles. The nearest real shopping is in the Yukon Territory, Canada.
I think we might have done better taking one of the other tours. A friend on the trip elected to take the narrow gauge railroad to Whitehorse, Yukon, and reported that it was very scenic. We found out that because of glacial isostasy (although the driver didn't use that term--nor probably knew what it was), this area is rising about one inch per century, as are a number of other places where the glaciers have been receding for many centuries. Our driver told us the railroad floats on the surface of the ground, rather than nailed down to the ties. Apparently many buildings in Skagway are similarly loosely attached to the ground, just to avoid flexure of foundations.
Here's one tour that I wish that I had known about in advance--we might have signed up for it.
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This is supposedly the most photographed building in Alaska--interesting because of the vast number of pieces of driftwood that make up the facade:
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The garden tour turned out to include a sculpture garden. It was all well known bronze work, some of it highly realistic, some of it a bit more impressionistic.
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For a place this cold and far north, the plants and flowers are astonishingly vibrant in their colors.
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This spruce tree with red tips is called, surprisingly enough, a red-tipped spruce.
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The hippie sort leading the tour tells us that the red tips are very rich in vitamin C. My son-in-law gave them a try, and reported that they were citrusy tasting.
Of course, behind everything in Skagway is the ever-present reminders that the glaciers aren't far away.
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