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Published: June 26th 2008
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We arrived in Skagway at around 6am, fortuneately for us we did not need to be up that early, so like most days the customary sleep in occured. One of the good things about being here is that you get around 18hrs of sunlight so you are never really in a hurry to do things on the boat. Skagway is one of the tiniest towns i've ever seen the population averages around 800 residents, the day we arrived there were 3 other ships in port so the population jumped to almost 10,000 in a matter of hours. It's amazing to think tourism is the only way the residents of Skagway put food on the table the entire town is designed that way, must be very quiet in Winter.
We had pre-arranged to go on tour of a summer Sled dog camp which involved a dog sled ride. We were met at the pier by our tourguide Toby (who happened to be celebrating his birthday) he was very nice and was full of information about the town and the sled dogs and their mushers, it was a very interesting drive up to the sledding camp. When we arrived we were taken
in groups of six up the hill and back again in a cart pulled by a 16 dog team. The round trip only took around 15 minutes but it is amazing to see how excited the dogs were when they knew that they would be going for a run. Alaskan Huskies are essentially the opposite of a pure bred in order to create a dog suitable to handle the harsh winter climates of Alaska and Canada the huskies are bred with multiple different types of dog to create a super dog, so to speak. It was so exciting seeing all the dogs they had over 300 there at the time so you can imagine how much barking was going on. Once we had finished the sled ride we were taken to a pavillion so a professional musher could tell us what she does and what it's like being out there in the cold doing what she does. After that came the best part of all, getting to hug a puppy, they were so cute, the one that Soph was holding was determined to chew a hole through her backpack or eat her earring it was very funny, mine just wanted
to cry (not so promising signs for fatherhood).
After we had finished up at the dog camp we headed back to town and were dropped off on their version of 'main st' we had a quick look around, as I earlier mentioned the town is geared towards tourism so unless you want a jumper which says 'Alaska' or some really expensive jewelry there isn't much to see, so we walked back to the ship. Our driver actually joked that when the residents need new clothes they have to drive over an hour to the next town, that is unless they're happy walking around in clothes which say Alaska.
Every night the ship always has heaps of different activities and shows on and tonight was no different we went and watched their crew talent show which in some parts was very funny and in others well ummm not so... And just incase you missed the live performance they played it on 1 of their tv channels constantly for the remainder of the cruise.
**Addition**
We're now about 2 weeks behind now so some of the information comes to us after we publish the blog lol.
I
had forgotten to mention that since we were on a cruise ship we decided the we really should make use of the Spa on the open deck, so we got into our bathers and jumped in, it was amazing sitting there looking at snowy mountains in the spa watching people walked passed us rugged up in massive wollen jackets laughing at us. It acctually wasn't to bad until the ship started moving and the breeze started as you could imagine while our bodies from the shoulders down would be nice and warm above the water it was pretty cold, I did pose the problem of getting out...
We actually were fortunate to meet another couple in the spa, who were also celebrating their honeymoon, and funnily enough the guy worked at LA disney. I was finally able to get some of those pressing questions answered which had been bothering me from the week before like, what do Disney staff do for work parties? Apparently they close the park early all staff are invited, family included, and the managers operate all the rides for the night free of charge, pretty cool I think. From the sounds of it family get
free entry over the year as well, nice benefits if you ask me!!
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Jo-Anne
non-member comment
Hi
The photo's are beautiful. Looks like your having an amazing experience, can't wait for the next entry.