The White Pass and Yukon Route...

I still have a few more posts to publish about our recent holiday even though we have been home for 3 weeks! This post is about the train trip we did from Skagway. We were booked on the afternoon train and I've previously written a post about our walk around the town of Skagway in the morning.

The White Pass Yukon Route is a narrow gauge railway which climbs from sea level at Skagway to almost 3000 ft at the Summit in just 20 miles; so that is quite a climb! The whole route was 110 miles of track. The line was begun in 1898 and completed in 1900. To say the building of this railway line was a challenge is an understatement!
The rolling stock consists of both diesel-electric and steam engines and restored and replica passenger coaches.

The train moved off through the town of Skagway and the outskirts...including passing behind the large Depot area where the rolling stock could be seen.

The line follows the fast flowing Skagway river for much of the  of the journey.

Our guide also pointed out waterfalls that tumbled near the line.

It's not long before the line starts to climb...

 I guess when the cruise ships come in to town, this railway is very busy! Every now and then we would catch a glimpse of another train which left before us. We knew that we too, would be travelling on that line on the edge of a cliff...and way up high!

At one point our tour guide on the train told us to look back...

A view of the fiord in the distance...
Just magnificent scenery...

And in a remote area we passed a North West Mounted Police Office/Station/Base? Yes, even though this train route starts in Skagway Alaska, the line does go into Canada. The building looks like a little log cabin.

At times the line came very close to the side of the cutting/cliff face...

A line travelling through such country needs both tunnels and bridges. There was one historic bridge which is no longer used...thank goodness!!! lol

These other bridges seemed to be in much better condition, thank goodness.

The trip back to Skagway was of course all down hill so it wasn't nearly as long. The staff got us to 'change sides' so that we got to see the scenery on the opposite of the train to what we saw coming up. 

Skagway...

Our third stop in Alaska was Skagway. It was still rather chilly at 9am in the morning.

And, as at our other stops, we 'shared' the town with other cruisers. :-) This was just one of the 3 other ships in port.

We started by catching the shuttle to the set down point right in the middle of the town. And then we walked around. A lot of places were not open until 10am so we filled in time by this 'exploring'. We found an old steam engine languishing in a back street...

Even I was cajoled into climbing up into this engine, but there are no photos to prove this. Believe me it was a long way up to get into the engine...getting down again was even more 'hilarious'!
We continued walking up the back street and noticed a small stream (Pullen Creek). Then DsD3 noticed that were salmon in this little creek. Later we found out that this little creek plays an important part in the annual salmon spawning. And I found this video here. We were just as excited as the people whose voices you can hear in the video. Here are DH's photos...

Moving on...
This building was actually down a side street and was both the Town Hall and the Museum.

There was lots to see inside...those jackets were made from sealskin.

 A mock up of a home in the earlier part of the 20th Century.

 The cup and saucer in the following collage was interesting. It featured the British King, Edward viii, who of course abdicated and his brother, the present Queen's father took over. ( and my reflection is in the mirror back of the cabinet) The blouse in the bottom righthand corner was exquisite.

There were interesting animal exhibits...the tusk on the top lefthand corner is that of a woolly mammoth apparently.

After the museum visit we went our separate ways for a while as I wanted to visit this shop when it opened.

I had a lot of fun looking through that shop!

More of the town...some sculptures.

Like the other 2 towns we visited, the early history included the 'ladies of the night'...

The lady in the window was inviting people to come in, but what for, we have no idea :-)! Lol.
More street views...

 I mentioned the 'ladies of the night' before, well let's have a closer look at one of the preceding collage photos...note the sign...'House of Negotiable Affection'; what a delightful term for a brothel! lol (I hastily add that it is a former rather than current 'house of ill repute')

More of the town...note more of those timber sidewalks/footpaths.

The railway was important in the history of Skagway and near the railway depot building was a lovely garden and some old locos.

The bottom left hand photo shows a rather elaborate 'snow plough/blower' attachment for an engine.
We checked out a few souvenir shops. This one had a big range of items featuring Sarah Palin...(In Juneau we had the opportunity to get our photos taken with a green screen of Sarah Palin)

After this we headed back to the ship for lunch.  From the ship's Garden Cafe, we had a great view of the dock area and the heliports. The helicopters were kept busy taking tourists from the cruise ships on flights. It was a good day weatherwise and none of the excursions had been cancelled.

Later we would return to the town for our afternoon excursion.

A quick overview...

I'm back! I'm back home in Brisbane and I'm back in Blogland after a little break. 

I know some of you have been waiting to see photos from our Alaskan cruise, so in this post I will just quickly give an overview of some of the places we visited. I plan to do more detailed posts as DH and I go through all the photos we have on our SD cards...it's a few! 

Boarding the cruise ship...

The first and second days were sea days...just sailing along.

The next day was our first stop...Ketchikan. There were 3 other cruise ships moored at the same time as ours...so lots of tourists descending on this town...

The next day we stopped for the morning at the town of Juneau...

The next photo shows some of the buses parked ready to take people from the cruise ships on excursions to the local attractions. We had chosen not to pre book for any of these, instead opting to get a shuttle bus into the town from the dock and 'do our own thing'. Ironically a number of excursions had been cancelled due to the weather.

Yep! It was raining. The girls and I went up in the Mt Roberts Tramway...it was a bit windy and the 'car' blew around a bit as we neared the top.

That afternoon turned out to be wonderful. The itinerary for the cruise was to sail the ship into an area of glaciation. The weather caused a change of plan as there was a storm in the planned area. But the Captain took us to another area. I will write a post just on the glacier/s but will share a few photos now.

Mid afternoon, I looked out of our cabin and saw blocks of ice floating by...

As we continued sailing we noticed the floes had become larger...

It was getting colder too so I gave the family a laugh when I got my hat and scarf out of my suitcase...I hadn't needed these items before this on the holiday!

Eventually I got my gloves out too...the family may have laughed...but I was at last warm! 

The first glacier we saw...

A glacier meets the sea...

The next day the ship docked at Skagway...another charming town. The next photo is at the dock...not the charming town.

It was rather windy at the dock...and cold!

The township was a 10 minute walk away or you could take the shuttle; we did the latter. We were delighted to find that it wasn't windy in the town and we walked around there for a few hours.

We even found an old steam engine near the town hall building.

Luckily, it wasn't part of the train we would catch that afternoon. But more about that in a later post. 

So that's just a short introduction to the 3 Alaskan towns we visited.