Our second port was Skagway, Alaska and it was by far my favorite day of the whole trip. When we were in the planning stages of this vacation, I reached out to a friend who went on this exact cruise a few years ago. She said her favorite day was in Skagway because they rented scooters (Skagway Scooters) and went on a beautiful train ride. As we surveyed the family the majority were interested in scooters and only 4 said they wanted to do the train ride only. A few expressed interest in both.
But as we started researching costs, we realized we could rent scooters for 3 hours for $150 or rent e-bikes (Klondike Electric Bikes) all day for $75. We are an active group and the e-bike lady gave such a great sales pitch so we opted for an all-day self-guided rental and the majority of us skipped the train.
It was a 25 mile roundtrip magical experience. The kind e-bike people gave us a map that pointed us to all the best sites which included a gold rush cemetery, a mountain waterfall, a secluded driftwood beach, biking along Dyea Road to Nahku Bay and across Taiya River to the Dyea Townsite (which was more like a fairy land) and the Dyea Flats.
It. Was. Amazing.
The whole time we just kept saying how amazing the scenery was. I was a little concerned when they said we were going to be riding 25 miles and I was really wishing we had the scooters (little motorcycles) but it was way easier than I thought it would be – the pedal assist bikes made it such an easy ride.
I had several “pinch me” moments including riding hands free down one of the hills with trees covering the street (think Meg Ryan in City of Angels), watching Steve and his siblings skip rocks on driftwood beach and walking through the moss covered forests of Dyea.
And because we spent the whole day biking we rewarded ourselves with larger than life fry bread from the cutest shop in town. It may have been we were starving, but it was a tasty treat.
