Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Boy, Mother Nature (and Alaska) sure knows how to kiss and make up.  After the case of the MIA glacier, which we were not the only ones who missed the asterisk in the description of Dawes-in conversations with others, they missed the memo, too.    We spent yesterday in Skagway, the gateway to the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1890s.  We arrived at 7:00 AM in heavy pea soup fog, which did not bode well for our planned excursion.   We have been here before, while they have added puppy time with dog sled teams, the highlight has to be the White Pass & Yukon Railway.  And yes, we had a 1:00 excursion time, no early morning things, remember?  Despite the fog, the helicopters and float planes were buzzing back and forth in the harbor area. Nope, nope, nope fog plus small flying things with mountains equal a big no thanks in my book.    There were four ships docked, 2 Princess ships, one Holland America and Celebrity.  The Holland America ship had the handicapped slot closest to town, Celebrity was docked at the furthest mooring from the shopping area.  As the tourist season is short, they were more than willing to allow you to pay the $3 per person to go to and from the town area.  As the morning wore on, the fog lifted, but the skies were still the gray that has shadowed us since Seattle.  Back to our planned excursion-It is 3 hours of breath taking beauty in a replica rail car on a well maintained small gage track (thank goodness because several times it literally hangs off the edge of the mountain side).  While you could have biked up the 15 miles or so, rising to 7,500 and waving to the Canadian Border, it is much more relaxing to take the train and you did not have to pack your passport and phone with the ArriveCan app loaded with your vaccine status.  This was my third time on the train.  My past two trips were in May 2002 and July 2010, it was green with the slightest hint of snow on the peaks of the granite mountain tops.  Mother Nature pulled a fast one, and there on the ground, even at lower elevations was a snow pack. That would be global warming at work, right?  When I first saw it at a distance, I assumed that it was gravel for the railway bed.  Guess I need to put new glasses on my things to do list.    What we missed in Tidewater glaciers we more than made up for in valley glaciers today.  The guides on the train who are often regular seasonal workers remarked that they have never in their lives seen the snow pack last this long.  There were some areas that had 20 feet high snow packs beside the track.  As we started our ascent into the mountains,  blue skies began to break through the gray.  I had to change to sunglasses the glare off the snow was blinding.  The Skagway river that flanks the train journey was swollen and wild due to the late snow melt.  Raw and beautiful glacier clouded water splashing and swirling as it came down mountain to the valley floor.  Usually we have the one waterfall of Bridal Veil and some wet rocks as we climb, this time there were many more small water falls, so numerous and not normal that the guide’s script did not include them.  You had to be camera ready at all times.  The difference in our 2002 and 2010 photos of the same places were pretty much interchangeable, but these are completely different.  These had brilliant crisp blue skies, the last remnants of spring green growth in the hardwoods and the white of the snow.  Yeah, apologies accepted.