Cruising Christine turns Gold in Gold Country: an Alaska/Legend Review

[bakersdozen12]

Skagway cont'd

 

At one point, my husband pointed out the window and was like, "Look honey, we are going over those tracks next."

 

 

Me = :eek:

 

Then = :rolleyes:, as I realized he was just kidding in his usual only-sometimes-funny kind of way. No, you don't travel across those tracks. They are no longer in use.

 

There are two tunnels that you go through on this trip. This was as we were approaching the second tunnel:

 

 

 

For this one, I was able to take a kind of decent shot of the walls of the tunnel just as we were entering it.

 

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More and more snow! And more beautiful mountains.

 

 

Eventually it seemed like snow was the only thing that you could see. The whiteness of it went on forever.

 

 

 

 

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Now I know what you are thinking. Snow is the last thing you want to see while cruising, right? Well trust me, in person it was truly a magical setting. At one point I was on the outside deck at the back and it actually started snowing. As a New Englander, it was so awesome to see the reaction of people that had never seen snow before this trip. I totally take it for granted because I've lived in NH my whole life, and it's easy for me to forget that there are people out there that have never been around it. That day I got to watch people trying desperately to catch a snow flake, and some that were trying to lean outside the deck far enough just to touch it along the side of the train. The excitement that radiated from them while taking it all in is something I won't soon forget.

 

And then of course there was the little girl on the train that asked, "Are we going to the North Pole?" We weren't, of course, but with views like this, it was easy to pretend that we were!

 

 

 

 

 

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Well unfortunately I'm going to have to call it a night. There's just too much to write about and share regarding this day. Up next will be our tour bus ride back down, through the Yukon and eventually back to Alaska. There's also our stop for lunch and a dog sled ride at Caribou Crossing. And a stop at downtown Carcross. And when our tour was finally done, we still had plenty of time for shopping in Skagway! I have to say, I really enjoyed the long days in port on this Alaska cruise. The 13 hours we were there that day allowed us to do so much.

 

To be continued...

[oneboysmom]

Loving your review and pictures!! Thanks for taking the time!

[Ondine]

I realy love your review Christine. I will probably never get to Alaska :') since I am down under in Australia but from 2018 Carnival Legend is going to home port Melbourne for a few months a year and I am booked to go to New Zealand in November 2018 so find your review of the ship great. I am so looking forward to sailing on her.

 

Keep up your reviews they are so inspiring. :cool: :D

[jimbri]

Great review! I was curious about the painted rocks so I looked it up on google. It seems since 1928, that crews on ships have been writing on the wall to commemorate their trip to Skagway. Type in Skagway rock paintings for some photos and more information.

[wtwien]

Love the review. Think of going on cruise to Alaska May 2018

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

[Buffalobills]

Thank you for the great review.

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When I left off, we had not yet made it to Frasier, where we would be getting off the train to board our small tour bus. On this train, you do cross into Canada, so you need your passports. It's interesting because they don't check to make sure that you have your passports when you board the train. Rather, when the train reaches the board it stops to allow Canadian boarder control personnel on to check everyone's passports. The process works like this: the train stops, and the conductor comes onto your car to tell everyone what to do. Basically, you have to remove all hats and sunglasses, have your passport ready, and when border control boards, simply hold your passport (open to your picture page) next to your face. Then border controls walks towards the back of the train, looking at everyone's passports rather quickly. I can only suppose that if you don't have your passport at this point you would probably have to get off and then re-board the train on it's way back. So moral of the story, don't forget your passport!

 

Our first stop that day via tour bus would be to Emerald Lake. First, we stopped at a place where we could walk right up to it. Given that it was the first week in May, it was still frozen over.

 

 

 

Close up of the mountains:

 

 

Then we boarded the bus again to drive to a place where we could stop along the road and take pictures of the lake from higher up.

 

 

If you google "Emerald Lake Yukon" you can see many pictures that will show why it's called Emerald Lake. Normally, when not frozen over, the color of the lake is a beautiful emerald green. But, for us, all we would see was white.

 

 

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At some point along the way, we saw mountain goats, so Brian (the bus driver/tour guide) stopped so we could take pictures.

 

 

 

A shot of the highway we were traveling along:

 

 

We also stopped to take pictures of Bove Island.

 

 

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One of my favorite stops of the day was Carcross Desert.

 

 

While it is often thought of as one of the smallest deserts on the earth, it's actually not a desert at all. The sand here is actually glacier silt deposited by a glacier lake. When the lake dried up, it left behind the dunes that look a lot like a desert. The contrast between the "desert" and the white mountains in the background was pretty cool.

 

 

 

 

 

Boot prints in the sand instead of footprints! It really did feel like you were walking through beach sand.

 

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Our next stop on our journey would be Caribou Crossing Trading Post.

 

 

Here we would have a BBQ lunch, time to walk around and see the huskies, and for those of us that had paid for it, a dog sled ride. I had purchased the dog sled ride option, and we had a set time to meet up for it. Which left us just enough time to have lunch first.

 

There was a huge room set up with lots of tables to sit at, and it was pretty busy that day.

 

 

 

Lunch was very good. We had BBQ chicken legs, cole slaw, grilled potatoes, and bread.

 

 

And the donuts (cinnamon and plain) were very delicious. I did go back for seconds (they were small). :D

 

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After eating we had just enough time for a bathroom stop, then we headed to where they have the dogs ready for the dog sled ride. It was not hard at all to figure out where we needed to meet, we just headed towards the sound of the barking dogs! I've never seen so many excited dogs in one place at one time.

 

 

You could tell these dogs couldn't wait to take off on a run.

 

 

 

 

Here's a shot of another one of the sleds taking off. As you can see, we are not talking about traditional dog sleds. They are carts with wheels that the person in charge of the dogs can steer.

 

 

Soon it was time for our turn, and the dogs were tied up to our sled.

 

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The dog cart ride was run, but I'm on the fence as to whether I would recommend it or not. If you have the money, go for it, as it was fun to experience. However, if money is tight, it's definitely something you won't miss. It's advertised as 15 minutes long, but I don't think it was that long at all. And there's absolutely no narrative at all provided to teach you about dog sledding and the training they go through, etc. Fortunately our tour guide did give us some history on that.

 

One interesting thing that Brian told us that day was that sled dogs are not full-blooded huskies (which is apparent when you see them). They actually breed other types of dogs with them to make the dogs faster. He pointed this out to us because apparently some people have complained in the past that the dogs are not well taken care of because they look skinny. Well, they only look like that due to the breeds of dog that they use to make them fast runners.

 

Huskies are my absolute favorite kinds of dogs, and you could definitely see the husky in all of them.

 

 

 

 

 

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I'm going to post some links to a few videos of the dog cart ride.

 

This was taken when we were waiting to take off. You can hear and see how excited these dogs are to be going on a run. So if anyone thinks that it's cruel to make these dogs pull carts and sleds, I can assure you, they love it.

 

This next one was the beginning of the ride.

 

 

 

And this is when we went into the woods. It was a pretty bumpy ride at this point, and eventually I had to stop video taping because it was just too hard.

 

 

 

And this last video is of the husky puppies.

 

 

 

Some pictures of the puppies:

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 11, 2017 by bakersdozen12

[bakersdozen12]

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After our dog cart ride, and we were done visiting with the puppies, we still had plenty of time to walk around explore. The trading post has lots of animals (which is great for kids), a museum, and of course, a large gift store.

 

Some pictures from around Caribou Crossing:

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Eventually we boarded the bus again, and it was off to see some more sights.

 

We drove through little towns, with are lucky to have such beautiful mountains as their backdrops.

 

 

Believe it or not, this used to be someone's house. From the looks of it, he probably only had room sleep in there!

 

 

More beautiful scenery:

 

 

 

The SS Tutshi, which operated from 1917 to 1955, at one time was used as a pleasure boat for cruise ship passengers.

 

 

 

 

At one point we stopped in the town of Carcross to do some shopping at some cute little shops.

 

 

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There were lots of totem poles here are there around town. Some pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we were leaving Carcross, Brian pointed out to us that the deer on the town's sign is well, extremely anatomically correct. Although I think you can only see a bit of that in my photo.

 

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We stopped at the Yukon sign and everyone had an opportunity to get their pictures taken with it.

 

 

On the way back to Alaska, we drove through some snowy mountains again.

 

 

It's interesting, but when we did cross back into Alaska, we didn't have to produce our passports again. Brian new the boarder crossing agent very well, and we were allowed to drive through.

 

We stopped at the Welcome to Alaska sign, for more picture taking opportunities.

 

 

And we found a little friend near the sign. I wish I could remember what kind of animal this was.

 

 

 

One more picture of the beautiful scenery, and we were back on the bus, headed back to port.

 

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A few misc pictures from the ride back:

 

A bridge that we would pass over.

 

 

Some water falls.

 

 

A pipeline used as a source of energy (using water in the mountains).

 

 

A view of the train tracks that we previous rode on.

 

 

And a couple last pictures of the beautiful mountains.

 

 

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When we got back to Skagway, Brian gave us the option of either being dropped off downtown or at port. Everyone opted to be dropped off downtown. It's only about a 10 minute walk back to port, and we had plenty of time anyway before our 7:30 back on-board time.

 

As with most ports, Skagway has plenty of shops to help you spend your money.

 

 

 

 

 

A member of our roll call had recommended purchasing a National Parks Passport book. http://www.eparks.com/store/product/22515/Passport-To-Your-National-Parks%C2%AE/ Since we would be going into Glacier Bay, which is a national park, we would be able to get our passport books stamped on board. Skagway also has a place for you to get your passport stamped: the visitor center of Klondike Gold Rush National Park.

 

 

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There's more than one dock at Skagway, and that day, the Legend was docked at White Pass Railroad Dock.

 

 

 

 

Before heading back to the ship, I decided I wanted to get a good shot of the ship in its entirety. This involved having to walk quite a ways down one of the other docks (I think it might have been Broadway dock), and having to tell a couple of locals that we bumped into along the way that yes, we understood we were heading the wrong way and that we couldn't reach our ship from that dock.

 

But I got my picture.

 

 

Walking around at port that day, it was actually quite warm and sunny. On the way back to the correct dock, we passed some docks with lots of small boats.

 

 

And I took one last picture of the Legend before we got back on board.

 

[bakersdozen12]

Great review! I was curious about the painted rocks so I looked it up on google. It seems since 1928, that crews on ships have been writing on the wall to commemorate their trip to Skagway. Type in Skagway rock paintings for some photos and more information.

 

That's so interesting! I wouldn't have guessed that it was crew members that painted them, but I guess that makes sense. Thanks for the info!

 

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We head straight back to our room once back on board, to unload our stuff. I used this time to take some more pictures of the rock paintings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And I did manage to find one of the Legend's paintings:

 

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That night for dinner, I had some marinated chicken wings for my appetizer.

 

 

And some sort of tilapia entree. I really have to remember to either take pictures of the menus, or start writing down the names of these dishes.

 

 

And for desert, right at the top of the menu, was something that we have been waiting for.

 

 

Bitter and Blanc! We haven't had this since our first cruise. Unfortunately, though, it wasn't as great as I remembered. For some reason, the top of it was very dry and crusty. Of course, it's still bitter and blanc, so I did enjoy it anyway despite the fact that it was a bit overcooked.