Day 4 - Skagway

Panorama view - leaving Juneau

The sail out from Juneau, while in the dark...was unexpectedly lovely. Perfectly calm water with the hills and town lights reflecting. Wonderful. We were the last ship out.

Our arrival at Skagway was early...around six. Oddly, we passed the Norwegian Jewel on her way out. She was with us at Juneau, yesterday. Why would she leave so early? Or was she too early? 

As we were waiting to board the ferry for our excursion, we asked our local guide about the cruise ship. Apparently, it couldn’t dock because a small fuel tanker was coming in & it uses the dock set aside for that cruise ship. 

Our ferry took us 45 minutes to Haines. A naturalist filled us in on the natural history of the area. Very interesting. When we arrived, we transferred to a green painted “cheese wagon” (school bus) for our trip up river. Very few cars, but lots of hills, mountains & wilderness. We turned off the main road to a small, winding single lane side road through the woods and out to the side of a river. Where two rafts awaited us. We were ten strong, plus two guides.

We traded shoes for rubber boots. Added life jackets. Then some instructions:

Don’t fall out of the boat.

If you are told to duck...DUCK, as there are overhanging trees and branches. 

If we get hung up on a shallow patch of gravel, you will be asked to bounce to get us going again.

Chilquit

There were five of us plus guide/rower per raft. The weather looked ominous, but no rain. Cool and breezy. The river we were on was the Chilquit, which is fed by glacier & snow melt. The part we were rafting on (for over 1.5 hours) is in an Eagle preserve. 

On any trip such as this, there are no guarantees as to whether or not you’ll see anything interesting. 

We made two stops along the way: One such that our guides could walk ahead along the shore to determine the best route to take, as the river changes daily; second, for all of us to get out and wander along a small islet of silt, sand & stone. We had a bald eagle follow us along the way, keeping to the tree tops. There were bear tracks in the sand. And moose tracks (no, not the Canadian ice cream flavour). There was an otter as well. 

It was a wonderful trip! At the end, we met our bus driver - without our bus. We now had an executive van. Our bus wouldn’t start. But more importantly, hot beverages & sandwiches. 

The mountains, trees, animals, prints & broody skies. Brilliant.