Soaking Wet in Skagway

Rain was an ever-present guest on our vacation. Apparently, it's not all that uncommon in Alaska, even this time of year. But it was still unwelcome most days. Skagway day started out overcast, but didn't end there.

The ship left Juneau at 7 or 8 p.m. and sailed overnight to arrive about 12 hours later in Skagway, the smallest port city of our cruise. I again watched the docking procedure from the treadmill, logging 5 miles in the early morning.

After winding my way back to my room through the long, narrow hallways, I saw this from our balcony window:

  

It's not graffiti, but emblems of the ships that dock here, painted directly on the rock face ... with the names of the captains included. The train was an excursion ... it took you up to the snow via White's Pass, a former mining route. (Or something like that. We didn't go on it, but heard lots of great reviews.)

Skagway, with a bustling population of 920 people, is a Klondike-gold rush-wild-wild-west kind of town, complete with a daily performance in an old saloon where the historically factual scoundrel Soapy Smith gets shot. The town was three or four blocks long and two blocks wide and it didn't take long to traverse the whole thing.

Luckily, the business district (candy shops, Tshirt stores and a Harley boutique), was a quarter-mile trek from the ship, making my secondary exercise a bit more worthwhile.

We hit dry land early, took a spin around the 'burg, did a little shopping, then headed back to the ship to catch a van to our biggest adventure to date:

A helicopter ride to a glacier!

A real, live glacier, y'all!

Now, I'll admit ... I didn't expect this excursion to be much. I assumed a glacier would be a giant chunk of ice and we'd just go stand on it. As a Wisconsinite, I understood what big piles of snow and ice were, so I didn't think this would be significantly different than the winter of '78.

I was wrong. So very, very wrong!

This was quite possibly the coolest thing I have ever had the opportunity to do.

The weather was simply awful.

The view from inside our helicopter just before take-off. It was POURING! 

 The helicopter ride was torturous, even with my little sea sickness patch.

The view from our airborne helicopter with the lead helicopter (black dot) in
front of us. Doesn't it look dark and spooky and ominous? I'm not sure if it
 was the rain, the proximity of the mountains or what, but the 20-minute
flight out and corresponding return trip just about about did me in.

But the reward was a freshly calved edge that even the pilots hadn't yet seen.

That dark blue is a surface never seen by human eyes before us. The pilot
said it wasn't there the previous day and we were the first people out that day. 

Those dark blue chunks were as big as a house, sheer slices of ice. 

I cannot describe the color of the blue ice. I cannot explain the sound of the rushing water in deep underground crevasses. I cannot convey how massive the whole thing was and how simply prehistoric it felt.

Jim and our pilot walking on the edge of a gushing creek and giant hole, as if they
can't fall in. The whole thing is moving/shifting all the time ... but what the hell!

But I can show you two people in complete disbelief, who keep repeating, "Can you believe we're on top of a freaking GLACIER?" and grinning like idiots as they do a "Glacial Push-Up" to take a drink of the most pristine water on the planet.

Ready ... Set ... 

Go!

And pose. Note that we do not have jackets on. I didn't pack any. You know,
because it's not like Alaska is cold or anything. It's not like we're going to hang
out on a giant hunk of ice for 45 minutes. I mean, who'd need a jacket for that?
Cute spring cardigan I'm sporting, right? The pilot kindly gave me his gloves. 

I'll let you decide what color this blue is:

We ended the afternoon with a great burger and beer in a little bar, watching the US World Cup game vs. Portugal. All in all, a rather perfect day.

Exercise: 5 miles on treadmill and probably 2 miles total in our walk about town
Food Splurge: Burger and beer for lunch, huckleberry ice cream shared under an umbrella and popcorn
Hair Day Rating (1=worst, 10=best): Negative 3