While the rest of the group took it easy and wandered around town that morning, Linette and I went zip-lining.
It was raining that morning, so we were sort of wishing we hadn't booked the trip, but the gal assured us that once we were under the canopy of the pine trees the rain wouldn't reach us, and that turned out to be totally true.
So we boarded the tour bus, and the gal gave us a guided tour of the small, historic town of Skagway.
The gal said that Skagway was built very quickly during the Alaskan gold rush, so the buildings were originally just plain wood. They wrote to Seattle and asked for everyone's leftover paint so they could protect the wood for cheap, since they didn't care what color they used. The buildings have been repainted since then but mostly kept their original colors.
She also said that the buildings with red paint were originally brothels. "For those of you who don't know what a brothel is," she explained, "It's where they sell soup." :)
When we got to the forest, we suited up with harnesses and attractive hats.
Then we hiked up the hill to build up gravitational potential energy. (Not everyone thought of it that way, but I was excited about converting it into kinetic!).
There was a balance course to begin with.
These beams were pretty wobbly under our feet. But those years walking along the rope between our oak trees growing up helped me some.
We were way up there.
And then we went down a series of 5 zip lines. They weren't the hugest ones we've been on, but the guides were a lot of fun, so we really enjoyed ourselves.
And here are 3 videos of the zip lining. In the first one, Linette goes spread eagle backwards.
Then I take a selfie video while I do the same one.
And, finally, Linette does the "Exploding Tomato," where she bunches up like a tomato until her pulleys hit the brake block, and then she explodes. If you listen close, you can hear the guide below say, "Woah! Exploding Tomato!"
This gal was especially nice. She and the other guides just come up to work for the summer.
The bus dropped us off in town, and we explored the town and eventually found the rest of our group wandering around as well.
There was a really big snow-chewing train on display there.
And these here folks were kind enough to let me take their picture. I was much obliged. (They were out recruiting people for their Days of 98 show).
Hey! I was just at the other Pantheon (the one in Rome). This one was about 1900 years younger.
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| I wouldn't call it "The" Pantheon, but it's "A" Pantheon |
This is the most photographed building in Skagway.
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| Arctic Brotherhood Hall, built in 1899. |
Someone made the genius discovery of some amazing huge cinnamon scones, and they really made us happy. I felt about like Steve looks.
Apparently this is where they want you to put your butts.
Rob and Andra went out into the middle of the street so that the Childs could find us. They sort of did a little dance while they were out there.
Skagway was a cute town.
Well, just when you might think that was the end of our adventures for the day, it turns out that we still had a nature tour ahead of us, so we were just getting started. It began with a 45 minute high-speed shuttle ride to the little town of Haines.
Along the way we saw many waterfalls.
It was a little chilly on deck with the wind.
Steve and I were up top most of the time. Steve is impervious to cold. Like a polar bear.
Finally we got to Haines, which is small town with many artists and a lot of wildlife nearby.
A lady picked us up in a van and took us to this little spot (with permission of the owner across the street) and we watched for a mama bear and her two cubs that were known to frequent the area. (I would love sit and read a book here.) (...Until bears ate me.)
Meanwhile, we looked at a couple of bald eagles nearby. (Can you see the white head in center of the photo?)
A sea lion came swimming along, which was kind of fun.
Here you can see a bald eagle flying over to the tree.
Our guide seemed a tad disorganized, but she was very nice and down-to-earth.
There were totem poles scattered about the area, and the local tribes continue to make them now. They're all symbolic and stuff.
We drove up to another pretty spot to see what we could see there.
Our guide said that this grass is all tromped down by bear traffic.
Here is a large bald eagle nest, with an eagle standing guard below.
Steven Elmes and I shot each other at 20 paces.
Our guide brought along a spotting scope on a tripod that we could use to look at stuff.
Still no bears, but we got to see another eagle, closer up.
We also saw another sea lion. (We were starting to lose hope of seeing bears, though).
It was incredibly green an lush in the forest there. Sometimes I miss the Pacific Northwest. Although this was even more Pacific-y and way more Northwest-y than I had ever been before.
I really felt like camping here.
Some guy apparently stacks these stones up every year. Every winter the snow knocks them all over and he puts them up again.
The sky cleared up enough to shed some color on the scenery, and things got kind of spectacular.
Then this eagle gave us a pretty close fly-by. (The Childs got an excellent close-up).
We stopped at one more pretty spot that smelled strongly of whatever that stuff is growing on the rocks.
There were great skipping rocks there.
This scene reminds me of the painting that used to be in our living room when I was growing up.
And with that, we headed back towards the town of Haines and were all a little disappointed that the bears never showed. We had been told there was about a 50% chance, so we weren't surprised. But after our fantastic whale watching experience, we were a little spoiled and had sort of expected a huge group of bears to show up and start doing circus dances or something.
Our guide drove us around Haines, including this section that used to be a military outpost.
She also told us that her teenage son once said, "Growing up in Haines is like being grounded for the rest of your life!" I guess you can feel trapped in such a small, isolated town. On the other hand, many artists gravitate towards Haines, I'm sure in part because it's surrounded by spectacular views.
Look at that tree!
Having given up on our bear quest, we ended up wandering around Haines. Here are a couple of totems at the cultural center and around town.
And here's the whole group, just before boarding the ferry to take us back to Skagway and the ship.
And, of course, just as we got in line for the ferry, another group from our ship who went with a different tour said that they had seen the mama bear and her two cubs right where we had first waited. We missed them by a half an hour. Bummer. But we still saw a lot of pretty stuff, including the views on the 45 minute ride back to Skagway.
And with that, we returned to Skagway, got back on the ship and ate and stuff.
In the next episodes we'll see some pretty darn cool glaciers.
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