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I was in Skagway many years ago and I could see right away it has changed. The commercial district has expanded, but has still kept to its original, historical architecture; the number of shops has grown considerably and been significantly improved in terms of the quality and price of the merchandise. There were many shops featuring beautiful Alaskan mammoth ivory pieces and local art, all lovely and quite pricey. The National Park Service has a greatly… Read More
This afternoon, we headed out for an official whale watching expedition – this time looking for Humpbacks. We elected to take a smaller excursion than offered by the cruise line, and had booked with Dolphin Tours. We left from picturesque Auke Bay (just as all other local trips), and traveled up Stephen’s Passage against a backdrop of snow-covered peaks and tall spruce forests. It seemed like the trip was over in minutes,… Read More
Beginning about 5:30 in the morning, the Solstice entered the Tracy Arm Fjord and got fairly close to the South Sawyer Glacier. Once again, our good luck held since favorable weather and ice conditions have allowed the ship’s Captain to navigate this far. Often ice issues require ships to head in another direction. We had wonderful commentary from the public areas, by our on-board naturalist Brent Nixon. Once in position, the ship paused for… Read More
We got to set the clocks back one more hour today, making us 4 hours behind EST. That was a good thing because we were up at dawn for an early excursion to Misty Fjords National Monument Wilderness. On a high-speed catamaran we covered 100 miles, traveling through the Revillagigedo Channel to Behm Canal and around New Eddystone Rock (initially mistaken for a sailing vessel by Captain Vancouver), before entering the… Read More
