Exploring Skagway, Alaska

If you are anything like me right now you are probably a bundle of nerves. My friend Eliana posted a photo the other day from some travel around Alaska—they emerged from the YK Delta and saw what was going on and had no urge to return to Florida immediately—so they took a trip to Kodiak. The photo was this beautiful sunset photo of oranges, reds, and purples and looking at the photo made me feel like things were normal. They are now heading back to Florida and all this.

But since we’ll be at home all weekend I will probably work harder on editing more Alaska photos and getting blogs written for the week. The last set of photos I have edited that I haven’t shared are from walking around Skagway, Alaska. And of course looking at these photos everything seems normal, too. My only knowledge of Skagway before this trip was from my Grandad who had gone there back when I was a kid, probably on a cruise. From the few people I talked to about it it was their least favorite city along the ports we were going to be visiting. But after touring the town and reflecting back on it, I think I kind of like it more than I thought I would!

Despite it being very blatantly touristy right out the gate from the ship, once you get back into town a bit you get a bit more of the historic aspect of the area, particularly with the National Historic Park.

We toured a couple of the buildings and went in the visitors centers and got our educational fill of the area.

One perk of Skagway was this amazing park! Definitely there for the locals, there were plenty of kids from the cruise ship partaking of the slides and swings! We stopped here several times throughout the day for Forest to expend some energy.

Despite going in a majority of the shops we didn’t find much of anything we wanted to buy for a souvenir. We did find a shop called Due North Stationary that I wished later I’d bought a few more things from, in particular a Skagway t-shirt that was not touristy looking.

We did wander around this little kitchen garden behind a restaurant for a few minutes and ogle at the seasonality of the vegetables they were growing—none of this would be alive growing in Texas at this same time, too hot!

The best part was getting off the the main drag and into the side streets and seeing how the locals actually lived. Oh, and if prices in the other ports were pricey, we found Skagway to be even more-so. Our lunch was at Northern Lights Pizza and I’m pretty sure we spent around $50 or so for lunch getting various pasta dishes. It was really tasty food but you kinda had to accept that prices were not Lower 48 quality. We’d see this again once we got into Anchorage and Denali.

Ah, to go back to this point in time…I don’t dare even think about planning a vacation this year.