Winding Down a Great Alaskan Vacation
on the White Pass Scenic Railway
In Skagway, we greatly enjoyed the White Pass train ride, which is Alaska's
most popular shore excursion.The
railway was built in 1898 during the Klondike Gold Rush, and the
four-hour ride features a climb of nearly 3,000 feet in just 20 minutes, with
steep grades, cliff hanging turns, tunnels, bridges, and trestles.
We spent much of this trip outside at the end of the car, where we experienced some of the warmest Alaska weather
and bluest skies we'd
had on the trip.
From Skagway, we sailed on to Prince Rupert Port Authority in
Canada where we docked for four hours before enjoying another full day at sea on
our way back to Seattle.
If you like trains, visit the
WPYR web
pages for a
wonderful photo gallery and videos of this trip.
We all
enjoyed having our pictures taken with these two handsome Canadian
Mounties, who I thought should have gotten a medal for their ability
to stand erect and smile non-stop for
four hours as they posed with all the Norwegian cruise ship tourists.
Below, the massive cruise ship nearly overwhelms the small Prince Rupert dock
area. The photo at right was taken from the same vantage point and yet another
beautiful blue-skies day.
I can't close this report of my wonderful vacation
without sharing this first formal picture of "The Schaumburg
Sisters": Mary Kaufmann, Mollie Wakeman, and Barbara Brabec.
We all hail from the small farming community of Buckley,
Illinois where, growing up, we never imagined we would all end up as world
travelers, nor that someday we would cruise to Alaska together. Our last
vacation together was in the mid-fifties when we went on a camping trip to
Yellowstone National Park with our folks.
