Skagway evening and sailaway

As it turned out, we did, in fact, leave the ship once again to walk some more around Skagway. By mid-afternoon, the rain had stopped and the skies lightened, if only slightly. We returned to the Klondike Goldrush National Historic Park headquarters to catch the first five minutes of the 30-minute movie shown there throughout the day (we had missed the beginning of the movie twice during our visit last week). While we were there we saw Anya again, the park ranger who had conducted our walking tour last week, and she asked us about our visits since then to Glacier Bay National Park. We got on the subject about the Volendam's rescue last Sunday, and it turned out that another ranger standing there, Gina, had been on the capsized boat in an unofficial capacity. Small world! She said that their tour boat had wrecked about 11am, and the Volendam had sent a tender to offload most of the passengers. Once on board the Volendam, they continued on to the Grand Pacific and Margerie Glaciers. It was only on the Volendam's exit from the park about 6pm that the rescued passengers were offloaded onto a Coast Guard boat and returned to the park office at Bartlett Cove.

Apparently, there were some kayakers on the tour boat using it as transportation to a launch point deeper in the park. When the boat wrecked on the rocks, they simply launched their kayaks from that point and carried on per their plan.

Such excitement!

While we were in Skagway, it seemed nearly every cruise ship passenger returned to the ships carrying a red bag from the Alaska T-shirt Company, a store right across from the Klondike Goldrush Park office. It became a running joke with us, but on our return to town we decided we needed to see what the attraction was. Well, it turned out to be a superstore in Skagway, carrying a bit of everything souvenir-y. G decided that the seven Alaska caps he had at home plus the one he'd already bought this trip on the Klondike Express glacier tour in Whittier were simply not enough. He picked up another Alaska cap at the Alaska T-shirt Company store and then another one at a second store. We finally had the ubiquitous red bag (and an almost-as-ubiquitous yellow one).

We raced back to the ship because we had a busy evening planned. Dinner was at 5:30pm in the Bordeaux dining room, still wearing our walking clothes and jackets and carrying shopping bags. We went right from it to the 7pm performance of On the Bayou (couldn't miss that!), and then finally returned to our cabin in time to watch the Sea Princess sail away at 8pm, accompanied by an enthusiastic horn blowing exchange between the Sea Princess and Island Princess. We sailed shortly afterwards (calling for coffee and cognac on the balcony) and fell into bed not too much later.

It had been a busy, chilly, wet day in Skagway. Tomorrow's weather in Juneau looks much more promising.

Photo 1: Alaska car ferry sails into Skagway

Photos 2-3: On the Bayou in the Universe Lounge

Photo 4: the Sea Princess reverses into Skagway harbor prior to sailing into the Lynn Canal