Day #9: Skagway

We ate our breakfast at 7:00 AM and were on the gangway leaving the ship by 8:10 to catch the Out to the Klondike Summit bus tour that began at 8:30.

As we were leaving we noticed that the water level was very low.

When we returned later in the day, the tide was high.

There's not much to say about that bus tour.  It wasn't very long.  We were back at the ship by 10:00AM.  It was foggy so we couldn't see much.  The ad promised lots of photo opportunities.  We had two stops that were lackluster.  The bus tour followed some of the White Pass Trail.  Our tour guide, Pete did give us some interesting information about Skagway and tried his best to make the tour meaningful.  We saw a valley where 3,000 horses were said to have perished during the gold rush.

We did enjoy seeing the fireweed... true.

After returning to the ship, it was still too early for lunch so we just grabbed another breakfast buffet.  There are so many choices that it was easy enough to find something else to eat.

We walked out to Skagway, visited some shops and did the usual tourist type shopping.  Our cruise book had an ad to visit certain shops to collect a FREE charm and coin.  We were told it was a fun thing to do.  The first shop was fine and we got our charm and coin.  It's a chain of jewelry shops and it is definitely a tourist come-on.  The second shop had an extremely annoying, obnoxious salesperson who insisted we had to try on a bunch of rings or jewelry of some sort.  There was NOTHING in the cruise ad that said you had to try on jewelry at these shops.  This was such a turn-off. 

Once that was over, we walked to a river where Pete had said it was the end of the line for salmon after they had done their spawning.  It was sad to see so many salmon coming to the end of their lives.

We could see the salmon coloring had changed to gray and white.  Salmon at this stage are apparently not very good to eat for humans.  Bears don't care.

We saw a lot of salmon who had already come to the end of their life cycle.

Here's another one of those "Killer" red squirrels.

Mom and Auntie Grace love their sweet wine so we surprised them with some sangria that we purchased during our walk through Skagway.  It was a lot cheaper than the $30 bottle of wine we purchased for them during the first formal night in the dining room.




OK... here's some of delicacies that we enjoyed on this evening.

Herb and Sea Salt Marinated Seafood Antipasto,  Creamy Lemon Emulsion

Nippy Peach Soup with Sparkling Prosecco

Baked Zucchini with Cheese and Onion Stuffing

Classic Veal Scaloppine in Marsala Sauce

Gamberi alla Fra Diavolo (Flambeed Scampi in Hot and Fiery Marinara Sauce, Pearl Rice)

Tiramisu

After dinner, mom and Auntie Grace loved seeing the Fiesta String Quartet from Ukraine perform.
All in all, an OK day.  The food was the highlight.

Our regular server, Chris was from the Philippines.  Our maitre d', Ricky was from the Caribbean.  Another girl who also served us was Victoria from Hungary and the head waiter was Loida's husband, David (also from the Philippines).  They REALLY worked hard to make our meals perfect and they always made our days end on a high note.