Skagway

Our second stop in Alaska was the small gold mining town of Skagway. We woke up early, as the sun was still rising, so we headed up to the top of the ship and watched the sun rise as we glided into the fjord where Skagway sits tucked into a valley.  

^^Kinda blurry, but this is the little town of Skagway. During the gold rush it was the biggest town in Alaska for a bit, with I think 30,000 locals. Now the population is just around 1,000. The town was pretty dead other than tourists, but the downtown area was still really cute. I wish I'd taken a picture of some of the shops and houses.

The weather was lovely--a bit crisp but just enough to feel like a nice fall day. Since we'd been whale watching the day before and knew we'd be going sea kayaking on our final day, we took it easy in Skagway and just went for a hike to a mountain lake. Because the cruise was mostly retirees and the trail was a bit steep, we had the lake pretty much all to ourselves (until some of the younger crew members were let off the ship and hiked in as we were leaving). 

I think this is called Dewey lake. It was maybe a mile and a half each way. The trail around the lake was adorable and dotted with enormous, colorful mushrooms.

Jared enjoyed panning in the creek and lake for gold flecks. He found one or two specks of the real stuff, but mostly we only found fools' gold. 

Jared found this hike on Alltrails, and one of the reviews said that there was a little dock with kayaks available for any hiker to take around the lake. We found the dock and sure enough, there were two little kayaks and a canoe begging for us to take them out:

^^Look at those huge mountains in the background! Most of the parts of Alaska we saw looked like the topography of the Seattle area, but with bigger mountains. 

^^Jared found a hidden cove to kayak into. He was living his best Alaska kayak life. 

We were both starving by the time we finished our hike, so we stopped for some Alaska crab legs at a local restaurant before hopping back onto the ship. It was the only meal we ate off the ship, and it did not disappoint. Best crab I've ever had. There will be one more post later this week for our last stop in Alaska--Ketchikan.