Traveler’s Tales: Sailing to Alaska!

I had no problem writing the section of “The Gold Rush Christmas” about sailing to Alaska.

I put my heroes, Samantha, Peter and Miles, on a steamer and sent them off.
It was easy. I’d been sailing to Alaska myself, and like them, I slept on the top deck, ate miserable food, struggled with sea sickness, and rubbed elbows with my fellow Klondikers-seekers.

Like Samantha, I sailed to Alaska with a bunch of men. My husband, my father-in-law, my three sons and, just for the fun of it, our godson Devin. The boys were all under 11 years old and rambunctious.

The men were a little better.

Twentieth century sailing

In our case, we drove our van into the hold of an Alaska State ferry and then hauled our camping gear up to the solarium on top of the ship.

Regulations allowed to visit the van three times a day to retrieve items or pick up things we needed. They unlocked the doors for 15 minutes.

We visited a couple times a day, mostly to retrieve food and books.

Like the Harris twins and Miles, we staked out an area on that top deck.

We laid our sleeping bags, a cooler, a bag of entertainment and a duffle bag full of assorted clothing around the edges of our area.

When we realized people were erecting pup tents, we claimed our two-man backpacking tent.

We enjoyed our fantastic view each morning.

The children ran wild, gazed over the side, played video games (they got two quarters apiece each day). They heard lectures, played cards and even listened to stories. I fed them out of our cooler and once a day we ate in the dining room.

I spent long hours gazing at one spectacular view after another.

We sailed to Alaska with a cast of characters.

One morning my then-four-year old son whispered, “look, Mom. That man has a little fire in his hand.”

The little boy had never seen anyone smoke a cigarette! Watching a man puff smoke out of his nose and mouth amazed him!

The summer sky does not start to get dark in Alaska until close to midnight. (I could read in the tent without a light at 11 o’clock at “night”). One evening, we pushed the tents aside, a fiddler joined us and we danced square dances. Many of our compatriots were seeking gold in Alaskan jobs–lots of college kids were headed to work in fish canning factories.

Like the travelers in “The Gold Rush Christmas,” we journeyed from Kitsap County, but we were on a vacation, hunting views and a different part of the world. Ours was only a three week trip (though we spent most of that driving . . . ) in between mosquito seasons.

Skagway, Alaska

We arrived in Skagway, Alaska at two o’clock on an August morning.

When I’d asked the booking agent what we were supposed to do upon disembarking in the middle of the night, he laughed. “Start your vacation!”

The waterfront looked different 94 years after the events depicted in “The Gold Rush Christmas,” but the town still had a frontier feel to it.

We spent the night in a former brothel, but didn’t tell the boys who used to live there.

Broadway is paved now.

So is White Pass, which we drove over in about half an hour. The views from the top were, of course, spectacular.

We ate a much better meal than that served by Samantha and Mollie in their tent restaurant, but what saw traces of Skagway’s history.

Soapy Smith’s saloon is a site to see, a statue of Mollie Walsh stands in a park and we saw the second half of the Klondike Gold Rush museum in this small town. T

he first half is in downtown Seattle (which we had seen the week before we left. I also had the boys watch White Fang).

There’s something special about visiting a location where you set a story, which is one of the reasons I wanted to write about Skagway and Alaska for A Pioneer Christmas Collection.

The drama of the gold rush, the horror of the passes, the can-do spirit of the Klondikers, the excitement of sailing to Alaska, only to face the hardship of the terrain.

It made for a great story, a terrific vacation and a grand adventure for my men–to whom I dedicated my novella.

And it also made me laugh at how much of my trip was mirrored in Samantha, Peter and Miles’ sailing to Alaska, too!

Have you been to Alaska? How did you get there? What did you like the most?