The Alaskan Jewel! Welcome Aboard….You don’t Exist!

We decided we were ready to head off the ship and check in for our excursion. It was early but we had nothing else to do.

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We checked in and were told just to wait for a bit as our bus wasn’t here but they would call us once it arrived. So we sat on some slabs of concrete and looked out to see if we could see any wild life.

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Something was moving out there.

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Skip kept asking me what we were doing today and it was hard to explain. We were doing the Klondike Family Experience…which doesn’t really tell you much.

Its description said panning for gold, trying out beer/root beer, sled dogs, puppies, lunch and a 40 below room. I thought it sounded good since it had a little bit of everything and it would include gold panning for Skip, puppies for Claire and food for me! Since Skip watches Gold Rush I thought he might like to pan for gold. He kept acting like this was not a good choice....but would still tolerate it. He was SO wrong!!!!!

As we sat I saw something move out there.

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I thought it was an otter but it may have just been some branches floating.

I had Claire pose for me.

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You can see how high the tide can get. And it was MUCH higher when we returned later today.

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There was a seal out there doing some swimming.

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And we watched helicopters take off and land.

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I had Claire pose again with the ship in the background.

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We just wore sweatshirts today since it was so warm…Skip went without one though.

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We saw another bus arrive so we headed over to see if it was ours and it was. Goldbeard told us he would be our guide and he told us to get on the bus.

Goldbeard had a reddish beard and Skip thought it was quite the coincidence that his parents named him Goldbeard. Hahahah.

We sat on the bus and waited for the rest to board and I took pictures out the window.

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The crew must’ve been having a safety drill.

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And then we were off.

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Goldbeard told us about the town and what it was like living there. He like many others, is only there for the summer tourist season.

He pointed out a few things, one being the only grocery store….though I think they had a whole foods type store too. I think he said a half gallon of milk is $3.50!!!! and a gallon $7. He said they use milk sparingly here. Everything is barged up from Seattle and if you are not at the store the day the milk comes there is a good chance you won’t get any milk for the week. And Skip being the dairy farmer asked why they didn’t have cows there. Goldbeard said that there really isn’t enough flat ground to have a dairy farm. Though I bet Skip would figure out a way. LOL.

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The ride wasn’t too long and before we knew it we were ready to start our day.

Up next….panning for Gold with Charlie.

We enjoyed the jewel. very similar to the pearl and star. My wife has and allergy to wheat, so food choices were limited. But what we found out that they handle food allergies great. As long as you let them know where you were going to eat the following day, they set up your food accordingly. One of the head waiters would go over the menu for the next day and provide main dishes, breads and desserts that were gluten free. If you dined in the buffet and needed bread or cookies all you hhad to do is ask and they would bring them to your table. The staff didn't leave out the gluten free items.

We enjoyed the jewel. very similar to the pearl and star. My wife has and allergy to wheat, so food choices were limited. But what we found out that they handle food allergies great. As long as you let them know where you were going to eat the following day, they set up your food accordingly. One of the head waiters would go over the menu for the next day and provide main dishes, breads and desserts that were gluten free. If you dined in the buffet and needed bread or cookies all you hhad to do is ask and they would bring them to your table. The staff didn't leave out the gluten free items.

My sister has allergies to gluten, soy and dairy. Good to know they worked so well with you. I can tell her that. We plan to do some family cruising in the next year or so and even though Disney is the top of our list it's good to have a back up.

On the bus ride we were given a couple of tokens to hold on to. One was for admission and one was for lunch. We may have been given a 3rd for gold panning but I can’t remember for sure now.

I put the lunch ones away safely so they wouldn’t be lost.

When we got off the bus, Goldbeard pointed out a few things like bathrooms, smoking areas, gift shop, snack bar, etc.

We then were going to go and pan for gold first.

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They had coats for use too if you needed one.

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We had to wait a few minutes till the group before us were done panning so if anyone had to use the restroom they could do so at this time.

We were standing next to Goldbeard and Skip saw this!

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It’s a dredger. Now that means nothing to me and probably to many of you as well, but for those who are Gold Rush fans on TV, I guess this is a big to do. Skip said “well that looks just like Tony Beets’ dredger!” And Goldbeard replied, “yes it does, because it is the sister dredger. Tony got that one from us.” Skip was now in heaven and this excursion, which I think he thought was going to be somewhat lame, just turned into one of the best things ever.

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It was now our turn to go see Charlie and learn about panning for gold.

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Charlie had a lot of funny stories and he taught us the ways of panning for gold.

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Charlie told us that when it comes to panning gold kids can do it well and adults usually have troubles. That is because you have to dip the pan in and dump out the rocks….gold weighs more than the pebbles so it will stay. Kids will follow the directions, for adults it just doesn’t seem possible for the gold to stay in the pan and the pebbles will fall out. And it was true. When it came to our turn, I just could not get it right at all.

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It looks easy enough, but believe me, it was not.

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After we got our lesson and stories from Charlie we got to move on to try it ourselves. Skip had to get his picture with Charlie….as you can see he is super excited now about this whole thing. We made Claire get a picture too….she was being shy but we got a couple of shots.

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I took a few pictures of the equipment laying around as we made our way to the panning area.

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Skip knew all the terms for each piece and was rattling it off as we went by.

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We each got a pan of paydirt.

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And we got started.

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As you can see, Skip was taking this seriously.

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I was horrid at this. Skip was ok and he helped Claire but I had one of the guys there basically do it for me because I just could not get it right.

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Now there is real gold in this paydirt and the guy said I had a pretty big flake….he said it was not the usual size and pretty rare. Score for me! We all got little vials to put our gold dust in. Then when we were done we could go in and have it weighed. They do not buy the gold but you can either keep it in your vial or purchase something to put the gold in. Of course they have to make some money some way…right?

We made our way up to get our gold weighed then.

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The line was pretty long but it did move fairly fast.

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Up next…I am the Gold Champion!

Soon it was our turn to have our gold weighed. The lady said she could weigh them individually or all together. I chose to have mine weighed separately and Skip and Claire were going to have theirs weighed together.

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It was pretty obvious I had more gold than them so I wanted to see just how much more I got.

The girl saw my big flake and was pretty impressed as well.

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And my gold was weighed.

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I don’t remember the weights though we have it written down somewhere. Mine was worth $21 though. Not too bad for a few pieces of dust specs basically. Skip and Claire’s combined was worth $24. So I almost doubled what each of them got. I would like to say it was because of my expert panning techniques….but we know that’s not true. But I think my lucky big flake helped me push my worth up.

Of course then we had to decide what to do with the gold. Now Skip does not like to spend money on things like this in gift shops. He avoids these kind of scenarios at all cost. I picked out a little clear looking locket that cost $20 and we decided to put all the gold in it and give it to Claire. Skip actually agreed. Then of course you had to purchase some sort of chain to wear this locket on. More money…we chose the rope one which was only about $5. Skip just laughed that we had $46 in gold and then spent $25 to hold it. But Claire was happy with it and Skip didn’t grumble. I think he was just so excited to have found gold.

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After that we had some time to wait as others were still getting their gold weighed. Goldbeard told us to just walk around and enjoy the area and we would meet by the tables after a bit.

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We headed up front to a smoking section for a bit.

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I took some pictures.

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And we headed into the gift shop/snack bar area and got some treats and hot chocolate.

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Then everyone was finished and we moved on to the next part of the tour.

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We got a look at typical things that were brought on gold expeditions to the Klondike and how many supplies each person had to have in order to be even allowed to go. I think (and I don’t have the info in front of me currently to double check), it had to be 2 years’ worth of supplies which weighed about a ton.

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Often you had to have 2 people at least in your party as well. You would carry some of your supplies so far and then one person would stay with them while you went back to get the next load. You did this all along the trail so it took a long time to even reach the Klondike.

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Skip was hanging on every word and asking questions.

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It’s really hard to tell how big this rock slide area is from the picture…but there are people over there walking on it and climbing around…You can’t even really see them in this picture.

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Now it was time to start to walk up the stairs into the dredger. Remember now, Skip has had THREE hip replacements and a total of 4 surgeries on the hips…meaning he is sometimes a bit slower and hates doing steps a lot of the time. He does them, but if he doesn’t have to he does avoid them. This was a new man today. He literally pushed his way through the crowd and was the first one up the steps.

As we stopped here you can see he is angled himself so he will be the first up the next set when we move on again.

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There he goes. He is leaving us in the dust!

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Up next, …..A delicious lunch!

Loved all the posts. We are on the Jewel in March. Love all the hints.

I have been following your trip reports for a few years. Have basically watched Claire grow up.

We will be on the jewel in March. Looking forward to it.

Loved all the posts. We are on the Jewel in March. Love all the hints.

 

I have been following your trip reports for a few years. Have basically watched Claire grow up.

 

We will be on the jewel in March. Looking forward to it.

How wonderful to be on the Jewel coming up. Hopefully some of my ship posts are helping you a little bit at least.

I look back at pictures from just even a year ago and I can't believe how much she has grown. it makes me sad.

Claire finally did make her way through the crowd to catch up with her daddy. We both were just laughing at how quick he had been moving.

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There was a little piece of paper that asked questions and you could fill it out and I think there was a prize at the end. I only saw one family doing it and I am not sure if they got a prize or not. But one of the questions was how many gold nuggets were in the jar.

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I learned more than I ever cared to know about a dredger. LOL. I will admit that this part was going a bit over my head and my eyes glazed over a bit. I think Claire was feeling the same way, but Skip was having the time of his life.

We moved on to the next room…and like I said before…I had glazed over a bit, so I don’t remember what this was for, though I assume it has something to do with running the equipment. I know he told a story about how they used Mercury to help get gold particles and didn’t realize that mercury would kill them and then everyone got sick.

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After we finished up here it was time for lunch so we made our way down and headed that way.

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We got in line and pulled out our tokens.

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The choices were pretty good and we filled our plates.

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The drink choices were few but we each found something that would make us happy. There was one family with some kids and the kids wanted milk so the dad went in search of some. I totally laughed….did he not hear how much milk is in Skagway this morning? And sure enough he was told there was no milk to be had.

There were tables inside and out and we headed out and found one.

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They did have some BBQ type sauces too you could dip your chicken in and it was very good. We all cleaned our plates. It was very tasty. I am not sure how they cook their salmon but I really enjoyed it.

Once we finished our lunch we walked around and used the restrooms and just relaxed a bit till it was time to meet up with the group again….in the beer room.

Goldbeard told us about different beers in the area, some they actually brewed themselves. Also there was a root beer that they made. Everything was natural except of the Sarsaparilla which has to be an additive by law as I guess the actual root is considered to be a drug of sorts at this point in time, but they are working on getting that changed.

We all got a glass and were allowed to try any or all of the different beers and root beer.

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One of the beers they brewed was similar to Bud Light and I did try that one.

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Obviously Claire went with the Root Beer.

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Skip did too.

I went back up for the root beer next and it was really good. I think Claire ended up with a total of 3 glasses of root beer and Skip had 2 or 3 as well. It really was some of the best root beer I have ever had.

We had to laugh at the light fixtures. They were very basic. Skip said he would make me some like those. LOL.

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I do want to say that when I looked up reviews on this excursion beforehand there wasn’t much. It really sounds like this might be fairly new. Maybe just 2 or 3 years at most is my guess. It also appears they were constantly adding to it so it would have more experiences and more room to hold people. I know part of the dining area looked like it had been added fairly recently and there were some buildings that looked very newly built. I am glad they are doing well enough that they can expand.

Once we all had our fill of the beers we moved on to the dog sledding portion. We went into a building and were first shown a movie about the Iditarod.

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I knew a bit about it but the movie was good at filling in all the details. And another score as Skip enjoyed the info too.

We then moved on and met Matt, who has done the Iditarod a few times.

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Sadly I got a bad spot to stand and couldn’t see Matt for most of this presentation. The girl in these pictures was his helper I guess you could say…and I think she does dog sledding too but not the Iditarod yet. She was very passionate about dog sledding and she introduced Matt to us. I can’t remember her name now.

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Matt was very interesting, telling us stories about his adventures.

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He had a dry sense of humor and would talk very seriously and then you realized it was actually a joke.

He showed us his sled and different features.

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The most important thing about the runs are the dogs. They are very well taken care of. When they take their breaks, he has to take the booties off each one of them…the booties are not to keep their feet warm but actually worn because their feet are so hot that when touching the snow it clumps to the feet….he then feeds them, puts them in blankets, massages each one, etc. During the whole break time he himself actually rests about 1/8 of the whole down time. The rest is spent on the dogs.

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He also told us how important sponsors are as they pay for the dog food…and then of course as he would talk about sponsors he would point to dog food or some other product and smile as if doing a commercial for them.

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He told us about the different kinds of dog food too. Depending on the temperature, that would dictate what you feed them. I believe beaver was one food given to them in extreme cold temperatures. It was all very interesting and we learned stuff we never would have known before.

Once we were done in this area we moved the next area….and you could hear the dogs barking!!!!

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Up next….Sled dogs!

We have talked of going on a Alaskan cruise and then we all get the bug to swim in warm waters. I have totally enjoyed the review!!

This sounds so silly but I tend to be a little xmas obsessed. One of the musts is to watch the cute but cheesy Hallmark movies. It is called "Northpole: Open for Christmas". The little girl on there, she is very young is identical to your daughter.. You have to watch! I kept thinking who does this little girl look like, then when it was time to read more, bingo..

Looking forward to the pups up next.. I am more obsessed with dogs then Xmas. Ha!