Hello friends! Um, it took me a while to write this post because I was at summer camp like a perfectly normal hooman child, going on canoes and kayaks, ziplines, rock walls, rope courses, water toys, and slip and slides, only to come back home with a cold and a very exhausted and tired body. Good times! Annnnnnywayyyyyyy, this post is going to be about Skagway, Glacier Bay National Park, and Ketchikan Alaska! (Or as I like to call them, Segway and ketchup can :D)

P.S. This is part 2 of my Alaska travels, if you want to read part 1, click on Juneau

History time 😉

The discovery of gold in the Yukon, Canada in 1896 led to a stampede to the Klondike region between 1897 and 1899. Skagway was the gateway to the Klondike. The gateway to the gold. In 1890, 98% of Americans were in poverty so, obviously, da boyz (and some girls, but not too many) headed up to the Yukon in hopes of bringing back riches to their families. But mining gold is NOT easy. The gold was first discovered in August, and winter in Yukon is not for the faint of heart. In January 2020, Dawson City was -44.4C (-47.92F). I have soooo much respect for these guys. That’s a lot to endure. Wait no, they all did that stuff willingly though… eh, I guess they brought it on themselves :D. There’s two routes to take to get to the gold, there’s the Chilkoot Trail which is short but steep, or the White Pass that’s longer but less steep. Both trails led to the interior lake country where stampeders/miners could begin a 550 mile journey through the lake systems to the Yukon River and the gold fields. And by the way, the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) required these men to have one years supply of food and supplies with them to be able to enter Canada. Do y’all know how heavy that would’ve been? If any of y’all find out, lemme know how heavy it is 😀

Fun (but not THAT fun) fact: The miners rushing to the Klondike are also called stampeders because they were quite literally a stampede. Let me paint you a nice picture; If you were a miner, you could not stop even for a minute because you would get trampled, and you wouldn’t be able to get back up.

Some very smart men had an idea to build a railroad to make travel easy for the stampeders to retrieve gold. Sir Thomas Tancrede, representing investors in London, and Irish-Canadian Michael J. Heney, an experience railroad contractor, this two fellow made The White Pass and Yukon Route train ride possible. Click Klondike Gold Rush to read more about the gold rush.

“Give me enough dynamite, and snoose and I’ll build you a railroad to hell.” – Michael Heney

Skagway was a booming town during the Gold Rush of 1898, but languished as the rush move on to Nome, Alaska in 1899. Fast forward, in 1988 WP&YR reinvented itself as a tourist attraction. to There’s two trips of the day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. And it’s $ 134/adult and half price for a child. A round trip to White Pass Summit is approximately 2.75 to 3 hours for a 40 miles (64.37 km) train ride. Originally, it was a steam engine train, but the train we rode has a new engine that the company bought in 2020. It was May (2022) when we visited Alaska, soooo Canada still had restrictions in place so the train cannot continue to go to Bennett, BC or to Carcross, Yukon. Y’all have no idea how much I wanted to go to Yukon. I didn’t care if it would’ve been freezing cold and wayyyy high up and deep in the mountain, I just wanted to go to Yukon 🙁 The train just made a loop around White Pass Summit (Elavation: 2,888ft, 880 meters) which is located in Canada. The landscape was beautiful. The snow was thick and as high as the train! It’s really amazing and it’s hard to believe how determined the stampeders had to go through to be there for the gold. The WP&YR is one of the most scenic and historic railroad in North America. AND we had some really beautiful and nice weather to go with it|! Yay! Don’t forget to watch my Youtube video down below.

Links for: White Pass & Yukon Route & Skagway for more reading.

After the train ride, we walk around downtown Skagway. The population is only around 1,000, but I bet during cruise season the population gets higher… maybe it even quadruples :O. The streets of historical downtown Skagway are lined with wooden boardwalks and restored buildings, looking like they are still around from 100 years ago. All across town, you will see statues and plaques about the gold rush history. There’s a lot of buildings that were preserved and restored to keep the ✨aesthetic✨ alive. So we walk around and visit different shops. One shop we visited sold gold nuggets, jades, precious stones, a mammoth fossil, and many other little things.

On the picture below: Left photo is the Arctic Brotherhood Hall’s facade had over 8,000 pieces of driftwood. The Mascot Saloon (1898) Museum. It is Skagway’s longest-operating gold rush era saloon.

The Trail Center is now a place where you can get your park permit for camping in USA or to Canada. It was The Boss Bakery built in 1897. People could go there and buy baked goods and candy during the gold rush.

Engine No. 52 was the first locomotive to arrive in Skagway in the summer of 1898, and it is also believed to be the locomotive on the first passenger train to attain White Pass summit in 1899. Beside it is the rotary snow plow. Lots of snow up there to plow through! LOOK HOW BIG IT IS.

Before we got back to the ship, we planned to eat at the seafood restaurant close to the cruise terminal, but it was closed. My parents wanted some halibut and King Crab, but it was closed so we had to walk back to the town and eat at the restaurant that we could find that was still open. And the only one in town happened to be The Red Onion Saloon, a place that was a brothel back in the gold rush era. My mother had the fun task of explaining to me what a brothel was. Lucky her! Anyway, it was now a saloon, restaurant, and the waitresses wore costume to match the time period when the saloon was still run as a brothel. So, uh, it was a… er…. learning experience. And a very interesting one at that. End of the trip to Skagway.

Day five was my birthday! T’was a sea day, but technically another stop because we were going to Glacier Bay National Park to see some glaciers! We headed up to Observation Deck on the top of the ship for some good seats to see the glaciers. We even got to see some of the ice fall down into the ocean! I was cackling evilly and chanting, “It’s all going to come crashing down!”. Fun! You can see me being crazy and enjoying the glaciers on mah YouTube channel!

The glaciers are like, right on the border of Canada and the US, and would you believe me if I told you that there are people living on the borderlines? Pretty much ON the mouth of the glacier? Well, it’s true! It’s one of the Native tribes that occupy the area, and they are the Huna Tinglit Clans. They’ve been living in glacier bay loooong before the last great glacial advance. The clan catch salmon and halibut. They hunt seal, goat, and deer. They collect gull eggs, sea weeds, and berries. It’s amazing how the natives lived and thrive in and around Glacier Bay. Some of the Natives even came aboard, and brought a whole bunch of stuff with them to let the passengers learn about their people and how they live! Later that day there was a cruise event, the Polar Bear Plunge. Basically you willing jump into a freezing cold pool of ice water, (outdoor of course) when the temperature outside is probably below 0. Did I do it? No. Am I crazy enough to want to do it? Yeah. But I just forgot about and I wasn’t prepared. But I had fun watching people do it~

Last stop of our cruise was Ketchikan! According to their signage, it is the salmon capital of the world. I like salmon! At the port, there’s a bubble tea store! And because it was my birthday yesterday, I got one! YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAYYYY! We tried to look for any excursions that would interest us, buuuuut there was nothing. We settled for a nice walking self-guided tour. Much cheaper 😀 The other things to do in Ketchikan are visiting a totem pole museum that house the largest collection of totem poles in the world, glacier tour, wildlife tour, fishing tour, and many others in case your wondering. Then we made our way to Creek Street. From 1903 to 1953, brothels lined the creek, but now there’s shops, museums, and galleries. So we started to looked around because my dad wanted to buy a gold nugget mined in Alaska or Yukon, Canada.

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In one of the store, they have five ounces of gold nugget and the price is approximately $21,000. Let’s just say, he didn’t take them up on their offer. After all the walking, we got to eat fish and chips and crab! All caught in Alaska of course, and it was all fresh too!

After the stop in Ketchican, it was another sea day sailing through the Inside Passage again. Then we arrived back in Vancouver where we started the cruise, and we flew back home to New Brunswick the next day.

It was SUCH a great cruise! Do I consider Alaska to be a tad overrated? Yeah. Was I disappointed that I didn’t get to see the northern lights? Also yeah. But, you can’t schedule nature, and definitely not God’s great creations!

I hope y’all have a nice rest of your day, and stay safe out there! It’s a crazy world! <3

In case you would like to check Holland America cruise, just click the link Holland America Cruise to Alaska

Is visiting Alaska on your bucket list?