Welcome back, Alaska cruisers!

Posted On May 5, 2010

The first regular cruise ship of the year, the Norwegian Pearl, arrived in Skagway this morning, all the excuse I needed to head down. 🙂

The weather forecast was for a bit of everything, and that’s what happened – sun, cloud, showers, a bit of snow. These peaks are the background at Rat Lake.

Emerald Lake isn’t quite emerald yet, though the ice is very rotten so won’t last long.

Brute Mountain hangs over Carcross. All of the peaks got a good dump of fresh snow the past 2 days (so did our yard!).

Carcross doesn’t have the welcome mat out yet – no stores and no Visitor Reception Center (VRC). Some carpenters were working on a trailer over by the Tutshi but none of them would say what the purpose is – a new home for the VRC?

Many Whitehorse boats are being moved down to their summer quarters, the Skagway Small Boat Harbor.

Fraser, where trains connect with buses and where you get processed by Canada Customs (actually it’s the Canada Border Services Agency). On the way home I saw pieces of what looked like the story of a couple of young Oriental women being arrested for something that was in their Yukon-plated Mustang convertible. Maybe Fraser does get exciting – who knew? 🙂

Peaks of the Sawtooth Range above Goat Lake, shot from the highway with about 250mm of zoom.

It’d been many months since I’d seen leaves on trees – they looked and smelled soooo good!

A TEMSCO Astar 350 coming back from a glacier tour – this was shot from the ferry parking lot.

The Norwegian Pearl. Alaska cruises prices are up from last year but you can still get prime August 2010 dates on her for as little as $899 (US) per person – and these for sailings that include a Glacier Bay cruising day.

The suites way up on Deck 14 are very impressive! The largest of them, the Garden Villa on the far right, is 5,000 square feet, with 3 bedrooms and a private courtyard with pool and hot tub.

A tug at the ferry dock.

Another view of the Pearl.

The climbing wall on the upper deck of the Pearl – I don’t suppose that climbing it gives anyone the urge to climb the mountain behind!

A White Pass train ready to load passengers for a trip up into the mountains.

Heading north again, we ran into Highways guys doing some Spring cleaning.

A pause near the summit to let Monty and Kayla get some sniffs 🙂

I met a small herd of caribou grazing beside the highway just south of the Bove Island viewpoint. I stopped at the viewpoint and a bus passeneger told me that on the way up from Skagway they’d seen a bear and some Dall sheep – he was of course happy to hear that caribou might be added to his photographic menu.

I stopped in at the cabin to see how the disappearance of the ice on Lake Bennett was progressing, and to update my “webcam” image.

I was surprised to see the ice almost gone. This, however, is the part of breakup that I love – the tinkling of the candle ice as it drifts with the gentle current where the lake empties into the Nares River.

The next photo shows you where the term “candle ice” comes from – the ice is cylindrical.

Another shot of the candle ice, to show you how large it is. When the ice is thicker, the “candles” can be well over a foot long.

I stopped at Caribou Crossing to see Iditarod musher Michelle Phillips. This is the antler pole reflected in the window of a building that she’s renovating as her story-telling room.