I’d never been on a full-blown cruise before (assuming that a pre-dam Three Gorges river cruise didn’t really count)…. & picked quite a nice one for our initial excursion. Holland America’s Nieuw Amsterdam follows the ‘inner passage’ up the western coast of British Columbia & Alaska, stopping at a number of interesting towns along the way.

Juneau is Alaska’s capital, and – according to our tour guide – site of the nation’s least-distinguished state capitol building (i.e., the Washington Post once compared it to a “county public health building”). We toured the city, & then headed out to visit the Mendenhall Glacier….. only a hint of what was to come.

Skagway gold haul

Skagway was next, and provided a really fascinating history lesson about the Klondike gold rush, which occurred in the very late 1800s. There were two principal ways to get to the Yukon Territory from southern Alaska & the U.S. mainland: 1) on the Chilkoot Trail, through a forbidding mountain pass from Dyea; and 2) on the equally-difficult White Pass from Skagway. Dyea & Skagway were located only a few miles apart…. but Skagway won out because entrepreneurs built the White Pass & Yukon Route railway line. We took a scenic bus tour up into Canada, & then came back into town on that amazing rail route, closely hugging the steep mountainous terrain.

The in-town visit then included a stop at a brothel museum (yes, really!), a salmon bake, and a gold-panning opportunity. After about 15 minutes of vigorous swirling & shaking, I had managed to capture….. exactly one flake of gold. [Another couple of hundred years or so, & perhaps I’d be able to pay for this trip!]

Finally, Ketchikan claims to be America’s rainiest city – averaging more than 150 inches per year (several times the amount in Seattle) — & we arrived on an overcast & misty day. Like most cities in this region, it had a fishing & lumber history, but now panders primarily to tourists….. & hence highlights both Native American relics (i.e., totem poles) & its own bawdy history (i.e., a lot more brothels).

But by far the most amazing part of the cruise was Glacier Bay – noted in the posting above.