Summit Scenic Drive from Skagway – Saint Greg's Travels
Loading
Social Media
Recent Posts
Alaska Cruise Blog

Summit Scenic Drive from Skagway

on
December 23, 2024

I booked Summit Scenic Drive for free on Norwegian with their $50 discount. The meeting point was easy to find with the signage and the fact that I had done the Street Car excursion earlier in the day. Please note you are supposed to bring your passport for this excursion. We did go through a border checkpoint on the way back but I never needed to pull my passport out.

This is our bus. I recommend getting in line early so you can pick your seat on the bus. I picked the left side because I remember that being the best side for the train. But the bus is on the other side so you want to get a seat on the right side to have a better view of the majority of the scenery on the way there.

It is true that the bus turns around so you get that view on the left side on the way back, but my experience with that is they don’t repeat themselves on the way back so you have to remember all of the sites you missed on the way up.

It looks like the street car company owns this shuttle.

Paul is our driver. He was a bartender in Tempe, AZ in 1990 when someone left a pamphlet about summer jobs in Alaska at his bar. He applied and got a job a week later. He now spends winters in San Diego but he’s been here every summer since 1990.

This is Paul’s dog who comes up here to Alaska with him.

The tour guides all talk about their huge expensive firehouse. They got government money to build it but it’s a very large firehouse for a 900 person town. I’m on the wrong side of the bus so I didn’t get a great picture.

Skagway International Airport. They have one flight to Canada which makes this international.

We are crossing the river. There are no salmon in this river which means no bears or eagles in the area.

Now we are crossing over Black Lake.   

This is Mount Hefty. That is Southern glacier to the left.

Our first stop is Pitchfork Falls. Paul said it was frozen solid when he arrived here in April.

That’s the White pass railway.

These poles on either side of the road are so the snow plows know where the road is.

That’s the William Moore bridge. We are going to stop over there on the way back.

Paul showed us photos and video from three days ago when this was all fog so we are extremely lucky to have this weather.

 

I walked to Canada.

On the way back we stopped under the William Moore bridge. Our driver only stops here on the last tour of the week.

Paul told us a bunch of stories. He said working in Skagway is like summer camp for adults. The last cruise of the season they all go out and moon the last ship going out. One year a HAL ship mooned them back.  

This is the checkpoint. It seems like Paul has a good relationship with the border agent and we were able to slide by easily without pulling our passports out.

I enjoyed the ride. You can’t beat the price. There’s no reason to be concerned about a repeat if you’ve done the train. We saw totally different sites on this ride. But if I were picking between this and the train, I’d take the train every time.

TAGS
RELATED POSTS

Leave a Reply