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Island to Alaska with Pictures (part 2)

cworld

By cworld,
in Princess Cruises

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cworld

cworld

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One final thought about the Historic Skagway Inn, home of the intimate Olivia’s restaurant. As my dear wife, the only wife I ever want, said, the lady that sat down with us was not very complimentary when it came to Princess. I’m not sure her problem was with Princess as much as it was with Alaska. She talked about several cruises, but they were all to warm climates. Her complaints with Princess seemed to be mainly about cost, and value. But, what really surprised me was here favorite cruise was a Disney cruise. I remember asking her at the time about the expense of a Disney cruise, she said that it was pretty expensive, but she was a Disney nut, and she really enjoyed the cruise, even without children. We talked about Mouseland and Orlando mainly, and tried to steer the conversation away from Princess, and it really was an interesting discussion. (How could it not be, I was involved. Ha, Ha.)

 

We all left the Historic Skagway Inn, (I never did find out what made it Historic, except that it was old) home of the intimate Olivia’s restaurant, and boarded Bambi’s Big Blue Bus (sounds pretty kinky, doesn’t it?) for the long ride (about 6 blocks max) to the train station, where we are going to board “an old-fashioned parlor car for a ride on the “Scenic Railway of the World.”

 

Hold it, H-O-L-D I-T, STOP! Right there. Wait just a doggone minute. In the immortal words of President Ronald Reagan, “There he goes again.” Just whom do you think you’re kidding? We are not just a bunch of kiddies out her on a elementary school field trip. We are at least semi-knowledgeable adults. We’ve been places and we’ve seen things. We’re smart (at least some of us are.) Again here is Princess’s description of the rail portion of our little excursion.

 

"At the White Pass & Yukon Route Depot, board an old-fashioned parlor car for a ride on the “Scenic Railway of the World.” See the original Klondike Trail of '98 worn into the rocks — evidence of the gold seekers' arduous journey. In Fraser, British Columbia, disembark the train and board a motorcoach for the dramatic journey down the Klondike Highway. Stops are made along the way for pictures at scenic vistas and historical locations."

 

I know, I know, you’re probably getting tired of me picking at Princess’s descriptions of their excursions. It’s just that this is about all we have to go on when we’re making decisions about which tour to take. If what I’m expecting doesn’t match with reality, then I’m probably not going to have a very good opinion of that tour. (Might be why our lunch partner expected too much from Princess.) Most of the above paragraph is fairly accurate, but “Scenic Railway of the World”, that I’m not too sure about.

 

I’m not very well traveled, but I do watch the Travel Channel fairly regularly, and I’m pretty sure that there are a lot of train rides that are more “Scenic” than this one. And before you get the wrong idea, I thoroughly enjoyed our little excursion, but, even the train around Rodent World had more scenery.

 

Carl!!!!

 

What?

 

Shut-up about the “Scenic” thing and get on with the story!

 

Why?

 

It’s not moving the story along, and you’re on a schedule.

 

What schedule?

 

Baseball Season.

 

Oh, yeah.

 

So?

 

OK, you win. I’ll move on.

 

Tomorrow, or so…

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cworld

cworld

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I’m sorry. I keep getting interrupted whenever I go to work on this crazy thing. But “No Worries”, I’m still here, and still plugging along, at least sometimes.

 

If you’ve been watching the news and listening to the radio lately you’re familiar with a controversy that’s currently going on in the publishing world. This controversy has cased me a little discomfort, and I want to set the record straight before we go any farther. I know some of you will be very disappointed with me, and others of you will even want to quit reading my stuff altogether. (That is if there is anyone still out there.) If you feel this way, I truly apologize, I can’t say it won’t happen again, in fact I’m sure it probably will, however, I want you to know I did it with the best of intentions, and sometimes even without knowing what I was actually doing. Please, I ask that you consider that what I’ve done, I’ve done for you, and that you don’t turn me into the journalism police or something. Here goes:

 

CONFESSION – The chat topic found on the Cruise Critic Princess’s chat board titled Island to Alaska with Pictures, both parts 1 and 2, is based loosely on actual events. However, in some parts the author embellishes and/or stretches the truth. There are couple of items in the topic that are completely made up. If this offends or saddens any of you, the author apologizes. The author hopes that you will find it in your heart to forgive him, and know that in the future, he promises to embellish and lie only when it is absolutely necessary to make the story better.

 

There, I feel better now. On with the show…

 

Let’s see, we were driving on Bambi’s Big Blue Bus from the Historic Skagway Inn to the train depot. It took about 3 minutes. What a wonderful scenic drive. Yawn. Oops, there wasn’t anything yawning about this trip. The first thing Bambi said was “wasn’t lunch great?” I don’t think she was quite ready for the answer we gave her. A couple of people told her, in the nicest terns, about our little luncheon. Bambi was appalled. She quickly went in to damage control mode. She said that our experience was unusual, and that she would go by the Historic Skagway Inn while we were on the train and try to get the “scoop”. When someone mentioned that none of us had gotten dessert, she told us she would try to have it with her when she picked us up at the end of the ride. The skeptic in me thought “Yeah, right”. What was that dear? I said that out loud. That doesn’t sound like me, not me, I’m, Mr. Perfect. I don’t say those… (Oh, yeah, no lying. This is going to be hard.)

 

I could interject something here about a one-way trip on the train up a trail to Canada, followed by a “DRAMATIC” trip down the mountain trail with Bambi driving the Big Blue Bambi Bus, but I’ll save that for later.

 

When we got to the train depot, Bambi pointed out our train. Pretty neat trick seeing that there was only one train in the depot. (Really, I shouldn’t criticize Bambi so much, she really did a good job. But I probably I’ll keep right on.) We got off the bus and we were all herded our “special” coach. All of the “Princess folks” had to board the same coach, like we had leprosy or something. There were several other coaches with just a few people on them, and there were even some empty coaches, but we were assigned a certain “special” coach. I’m sorry, did I say “coach”, how positively gauche of me. I should say we were fashionably escorted to our “old-fashioned parlor car”. By our “old fashioned conductor”.

 

Pic of “old fashioned conductor”, and “old fashioned parlor car”

 

http://community.webshots.com/photo/351554714/1352499135070712923glMvJH

http://community.webshots.com/photo/351554714/1352515415070712923femNQn#

 

A few minutes after we boarded our “old-fashioned parlor car”, the engine came down the track to hook up with our linked “old-fashioned parlor cars”. It was an interesting looking contraption. It didn’t look at all like something out of the “Wild Wild West” or something from “Murder on the Orient Express”. It looked downright plain. Yes I mean PLAIN. Nothing special. Not old, not new. Just practical. In fact it looked downright small. I’m not really in to trains, but I don’t ever remember seeing an engine like this one. And just for the record, the color is not very pretty either.

 

Picture of train engine:

http://community.webshots.com/photo/419328125/2241391630075876446GhtuUL#

 

Sorry about the quality, I was in a hurry when I took it. If I had another shot, I’d include it.

 

Pardon the Interruption --- What’s up with this love of all things “old-fashioned” or “historic”? Can anything in the United States really be “historic”? I mean, really our country is a baby. Our oldest structures are what, 400 years old at the most? Right? Think about things in the Middle East where relics are found all of the time that are thousands of years old. And then there is the European continent where it’s not unusual to see structures that have been there since, well, since, well for a very long time. I went to visit my Grandmother this week. She had her 94th birthday. I think 94 qualifies as old, but I’m not sure that a lot of things in Alaska can qualify as old. At least not anything that was brought there by the “white” man. Our son is going to Italy next year with the choir, and they are going to see things that qualify as old, but I still question anything in Alaska being OLD.

 

I hope no one actually read that last paragraph it was a total waste of time.

 

After about 5 minutes of captivity, the conductor come through our special “old-fashioned parlor car” to collect our tickets. Tickets? We don’t have any tickets. The conductor was adamant. We should have tickets. He said our bus driver should have given them to us. Well, she didn’t. So what are you going to do, throw all of us off the train? Hope not, since it was already in motion. He really didn’t know what to do and finally he just left.

 

Conductor taking tickets:

http://community.webshots.com/photo/351554714/1352515453070712923rjXdGu

 

Boy we’re off to a good start on this tour. No lunch followed by no train tickets. I hope this train ride is worth the price.

 

Before he left the conductor pointed out that there was water available in the front of the “old-fashioned parlor car”. I walked up and got one for both me and Mrs. C. The water bottles were really cool. No, not hot or cold, cool, I’m talking about what it looked like was cool (radical, groovy, hip, happening, far out…). They were shaped kinda like a train engine. However they weren’t shaped like the train engine that was pulling our “old-fashioned” parlor car. It was shaped like an “old-fashioned” train engine like those train engines that they have pulling the trains around Rodent World. I was really impressed, and grateful. I slugged the water down in just a couple of seconds. I was thirsty. The only thing that would have been better is if it would have been Dr. Pepper. It was cool, temperature wise, and hit the spot.

 

Picture of water bottle:

http://community.webshots.com/photo/419328125/2135434630075876446jMniUC

 

More later…

 

PS. Private message for tee_wrecks. Can I go, Can I go? At least say Hi to the Rangers for me.

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cruzluvr2

cruzluvr2

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Hey Carl maybe when you go to Chicago to be on Oprah's show you can invite your faithful readers to be in the audience. Surely the guest can choose a few guests, I've always wanted to go. I was on the same cruise as you were -- I can at least say I know for a fact some of these things are true. :p I'm still waiting to see what you have to say about the stage that never got back to working properly.

 

If you care to know, this novel of yours is approximately 170 pages in a Word document. Yes, I'm still copying this info - some day I'm going to go back and read it all again.

 

Gail

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alwalaska

alwalaska

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Hi Carl! We are still here faithfully reading. I have my shore excursions for June pre-reserved, but still have time to make changes if nessary. So far I am avoiding the salmon bake and skagway inn and going for free food on the ship. :)

 

Keep it coming. We'll wait kind of patiently.

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cworld

cworld

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Gail, I hope that some day we can all gather somewhere and celebrate this magnificient screed. OK so maybe it's not so magnificient, but maybe somehow, somewhere we'll run into each other and share a Coke.

 

Ann, "free food" that's a good one, but it was vastly superior to anything we got on shore. And thanks for waiting, even if it's not always with great PATIENCE.

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cworld

cworld

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Sorry this took so long, another week with a big curve ball in the middle. And no I didn't hit it out of the park. (More like a swing and a miss.)

 

The Great Train Robbery

 

It was early May, and the weather was unbelievable. Temperatures were in the 70’s instead of the usual 40’s. Skies were blue, and the birds were everywhere. This was the first day of the tourist season. The first cruise ship of the year docked early this morning, followed closely at noon by the second ship of the season.

 

What a great day for a train robbery.

 

“Hmmm”, Big Jim said, “wonder who we’re gonna hit today?”

 

“Looks to me like the Coral and one on HAL’s new boats in the port, I don’t see anybody in the tender area.” I said confidently, or at least as confidently as a kid on his first great adventure could. To tell the truth, I was scared, in fact I was about an inch from peeing in my pants, but that would have been very embarrassing.

 

“If you would have studied your schedules like you were supposed too, you would know that the Island is at dock 1, not the Coral and the Ryndam in the one in front of it,” said Jamie, my annoying twin half sister.

 

“Hush you two, I’ve got to concentrate.” Big Jim said. He was trying to get us in to position so that he could stop the train without getting all of us killed. That wouldn’t be good. He was maneuvering the fake track break onto the big curve at the Black Tombstone. He’d picked this place because it offered the best place for us to hit the train while he distracted the crew. “There, that should just about do the trick,” Big Jim said, “now we wait.”

 

We climbed down the hill a little bit and got in to the brush. Big Jim sat down on a rock over by the fake track break and lit up a smoke. He wouldn’t let us smoke, “stunt your growth” he was always saying. I didn’t want to believe it, but if Big Jim said it, it was bound to be true.

 

Jamie and I waited, and waited, and we waited. After about a week or so it seemed to me, I hollered at Big Jim “how much longer, Big Jim.” But Big Jim just put his finger over his mouth and shushed me. Jamie, who was having as much trouble as I was sitting still, looked at me as if I were a “little” kid. “Hey, I’m not a little kid, I’m almost 11”, I thought to myself. And I settled and waited some more.

 

One thing I’m as sure of as an eleven year old can be sure of is I’m not very patient. It’s not my strong suit. I don’t like to wait for anything. If the bus is 2 minutes late, I’ll start walking. I get grumpy when we eat a late dinner. It’s so bad that I start bugging Mom on Halloween about opening Christmas presents. And this waiting stuff is for the birds or the bees or something, but not for me.

 

We were waiting for the afternoon White Pass and Yukon out of Skagway. Big Jim picked the afternoon, because it always seemed to be fuller than the morning run. Big Jim also figured that the passengers might not be as alert since the stiffs would be missing their afternoon naps.

 

Finally, Big Jim hears it. He calls out to us “Here it comes, be ready.” Those rich stiffs don’t have a clue what’s about to happen to them. You know how those cruisy’s are. They’re all fat, dumb and happy sitting there on that fancy train, being chauffeured around like a bunch of spoiled brats. They come in on that big, fat, decadent, and yes I know what the word decadent means, cruise ship where all they do all day is sit around eating caviar, drinking champagne, and watching boring movies. And then, they come ashore here and think we should be their slaves for a day. They run around thinking that we should provide them with cheap entertainment and cheap trinkets. Well today were going to give these geeks some cheap entertainment that they’ll never forget.

 

Bang! Big Jim’s shotgun roars. He jumps on the track and waves at the train. I guess the engineer is probably in on the gig, because he slams on the breaks really quickly. The train screeches smoothly to a stop with our car parked right in front of us. Jamie and I wait until Big Jim distracts the engineer. After about 2 minutes the engineer and the conductor jump off of the train and follow Big Jim down the tracks. That’s our cue. Jamie and I and the rest of the gang pull our masks up and jump out of the brush. Jamie an I go to our assigned car and climb boldly on to the train. Jamie and I have the third car in line, she goes in the back and I go in the front. This car is supposed to have those stiffs from the Island Princess. This ought to be juicy.

 

I, being the older and bigger of us, holler at the stiffs, “Put you hands up, youse guys, this is a stick up.” Pretty good start I thought. I even disguised my voice so no one could later tell who it really was.

 

Nobody moved.

 

I hollered “I mean it, I’ve got a big gun here and I’m knows how to use it. You ladies if’n you would be so kind, open up yours purses, and you men get your money out cause we’s takin it all.”

 

There was this old guy in the back that piped up and said, “Yeah, who says?”

 

I hate old guys, so I yelled back “None of yours stinkin beeswax.” I figured if I talked like a dummy it would confuse them later.

 

“I do.” The old guy said.

 

“Just who do youse think you are,” I said, trying to sound like one of those old gangster movies.

 

“Me,” the old guy said, “I’m your worst nightmare.”

 

“What do you mean, my worst nightmare?” I said trying to sound extremely confident.

 

“Just wait and see” he said, and he smiled at me. This old guy was starting to annoy me. Nobody messes with me, and I figured he was messing with me and no one messes with me and lives to tell anyone about it. This guy was messing with me in front of a bunch of people. I was ready to blow. I decided to cap him, you know, shoot him in the kneecap make it where he could never walk again, but then I remembered that Big Jim didn’t let us actually put ammunition in our guns. He said we might hurt someone and that hurting someone would cause problems for the rest of our summer plans.

 

“Oh, yeah, we’ll just see” I yelled and I started walking toward this stupid old guy. I had to do something put him in his place. I was starting to loose control of the situation. I walked a couple of steps down toward him puffing up my chest as big as it would go. He just smiled that weasly smile of his. I was gonna wipe that grin right off his… OOPS.

What was that? What happened to my gun? I looked around and this real pretty lady had my gun and was taking it apart.

 

“Little boys shouldn’t play with such dangerous toys” the beautiful dark haired lady said in a wonderful British sounding accent. I looked up and the old guy was holding Jamie by her shoes and shaking her gently.

 

“Kids” the old guy said. Then he looked at her and said “are you still sure you want some?” I hate old guys.

 

Whoa, what’s that other book doing here? I thought we got rid of that thing a couple of weeks ago. I’m gonna have to send this computer to the shop and get it checked out. Or maybe I should ditch this boring report and write the other book. I might actually be better at writing fiction. Then again maybe not…

 

Back to the train ride. We started out of the town of Skagway and began the long climb up the “Klondike trail” toward Canada. The train accelerated gently as we passed the water treatment plant and the railroad yard again. It wasn’t a pretty site.

 

Finally we left town and began our journey in to the unknown.

 

A little about the train.

 

The interior of the train was very nice. The décor was tastefully done with a woodgrain paneling accents and nice gray carpeting. There were some gold accents to accentuate and highlight the wood finish. There were also some white accents built in to the wood. This gave the “old-fashioned parlor car a very bright, light happy feel. The “old-fashioned parlor car” had a high ceiling with some skylights. I never did figure out the purpose of the skylights, maybe except for some extra decorations, and a place where train robbers could get in from the roof.

 

At each end ot the “old-fashioned parlor car” there was a door that had an opening to a platform from which you could get to the next car. The door was a black wood frame around a large glass plate.

 

The seats were fairly comfortable for 2 smallish people, but not real comfortable for 2 Pooh size people. I tried to sit by Mrs. C for a minute, but decided since there were some empty seats I’d place my ample posterior in one of those.

 

Each row had 2 seats separated by an aisle. As you can see from the pictures, each seat was set up against a large picture window. These windows were very clean and just made for taking pictures out of. Which for a time I did.

 

Here are a couple of pictures of the interior:

 

http://community.webshots.com/photo/419328125/2937666340075876446VKKUIQ

http://community.webshots.com/photo/351554714/1352515453070712923rjXdGu

 

More train ride later. That is if I can start at least fouling these curve balls off.

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DLSHS_Mom

DLSHS_Mom

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Carl,

 

Thanks for posting the pictures of the railroad car interior. We had a lady in our car that was afraid of heights and spent the entire trip asking us why her husband was trying to kill her :eek:

 

Keep up the stories...I love remembering our wonderful trip!

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cworld

cworld

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Come ride the little train that is rolling down the tracks to the junction.

(Petticoat Junction)

Forget about your cares, it is time to relax at the junction.

(Petticoat Junction)

 

Lotsa curves, you bet. Even more when you get

To the junction, Petticoat Junction.

 

There's a little hotel called the Shady Rest at the junction.

(Petticoat Junction)

It is run by Kate, come and be her guest at the junction.

(Petticoat Junction)

And that's Uncle Joe, he's a movin' kind of slow at the junction,

Petticoat Junction.

 

Bring back some memories?

 

Let’s see… Where were we? Oh, yeah on the train to Canada.

 

Before I go to far in to this I want to go ahead and give my rating for this excursion. I’m doing this because I’m going to make a couple of constructive suggestions and it might sound like we didn’t enjoy this ride. We did very much. I highly recommend the train ride. It was everything we hoped for.

 

Rating for the train ride to Canada – A – pretty cool. Could be a little better, but really it was fun.

 

On with the ride…

 

The first couple of miles outside of Skagway the scenery is pretty bland. The whole valley area was formed when a glacier receded. The glacier left lots of areas where nothing grows. There are areas of unsightly rock formations, and areas of beautiful rock formations. There are places where there is tree and plant life, and areas that look like the moon.

 

But soon we found ourselves headed up the trail. It’s really hard to believe that men actually took this trail up to find gold. Not only did they take this trail, but they also had to bring 2,000 pounds (as in one ton) of gear and supplies with them. It would be a daunting task to try to take this trip with 100 pounds of gear, much less carting a whole ton of stuff. Even if you had mules and a wagon, it would be a long arduous voyage to transport all of that stuff up to the area where the Gold Rush was taking place. I don’t remember anyone actually saying anything about it, but I would guess that a good percentage of the men who started the voyage didn’t finish it.

 

Along the trail there are several landmarks. There’s a black tombstone. There’s a house up on a hill with a big wall where there is some graffiti painted on the wall. There are some beautiful valleys where you can see the glacier fed river running out to the sea. All along the side of the tracks there are places where the melting snow runs down the side of the mountains where it makes mini waterfalls. It was all interesting and very beautiful. By the way in case I forgot to mention it, it was an absolutely magnificent day in the hills above Skagway Alaska.

 

Here are some of the 200 or so pictures I took on this little ride.

http://homepage.mac.com/cktrent2/PhotoAlbum19.html

 

Also on the trip we saw this “old-fashioned” suspension bridge. It looked pretty cool. As we approached it I wondered if we were really going to turn and go over it. We came up on it so fast that I didn’t have time to look at the far side and see that the snow was covering the far side of the track. I was too busy snapping these great pictures to take in the scenery. A couple of seconds later it became patently obvious that no train would be taking this bridge again.

 

As we made our way up the mountain it began to get colder. I started going in to the cabin to warm up. The wind chill on the little platform was getting pretty low. I did have on a coat and a sweatshirt, but I didn’t have any gloves or anything over my ears. And besides after you took a hundred pictures or so it got a little boring. Also the platform wasn’t really very comfortable. There wasn’t anywhere to sit, and only 2 people would fit on the railing at a time. So if there were more than 2 people out there, you would have to take turns. It was possible to step over to the platform on the next car, however, there were signs that said that this was forbidden. (Didn’t stop me.)

 

My only criticism (OK, it’s not my only, but…) of the train ride portion of our little insignificant day in Skagway revolves around the monologue that was going on while the train was in motion. There was a kid on a microphone that was telling us about the things that were going by. The problem was that when you were out on the picture platform you couldn’t hear the kid talking. So, when we were out on the platform, we didn’t know what was coming to take pictures of. You could only hear the monologue if you were inside the train, and then you would have to take pictures through the picture windows, which wasn’t totally a bad thing, but as any of us professionalish photograph taking types will tell you, taking pictures through a piece of glass can be tricky. You have to get the lens in just the right position so as to not get a reflection off the glass, like I did on that picture of the train engine. It’s not easy being a professionalish photograph taker.

 

Another criticism I have is that the dialog the kid was using was not very imaginative, or particularly interesting. It was also geared to what was happening in the first coach, since, I assume, he was in the first coach. So we heard about what the kid was talking about long before we could see what the kid was talking about. It was like what I remember from the old space flight days. That built in lag time. You’d hear Mission Control talk then wait for the response. Or like listening to the OU game on the radio while watching it on TV. The TV usually has a 2 second or so delay, so you hear the call of what’s going on before you see the play happen. That’s kinda what the monologue of the train ride seemed like.

 

Pretty soon, we reached Canada. Our little train ride was coming to an end. Some of the scenery was spectacular, and I’d love to do it again. As we pulled into the train station in Canada, we stopped right in front of our bus. I was amazed by what I saw on our bus when we got off of the train.

 

http://community.webshots.com/photo/351554714/1352520603070712923jDvDiS

 

This triggered an avalanche of thoughts in my mind, and I’ll share them with you in our next conversation.

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Shirleya53

Shirleya53

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Has anyone heard from Carl. He has not posted anything on this thread in almost two months.

 

:o My bad! I had bookmarked page 5 so I wouldn't have to keep looking for this thread. Every time I brought it up, there was nothing new. When I made the above post, I discovered a whole bunch (two months worth) of postings.

 

That taught me a lesson :D :D

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