Chapter 34
Snow Dogs

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So what was our next exciting Port Adventure going to be? Well, when Tracy and I first started researching our Alaska cruise, we almost immediately found out about the opportunity to try out dogsledding. Now, Disney offers ridiculously expensive excursions that include taking a helicopter to a glacier and then riding sled dogs through the snow. That sounds truly amazing, but we couldn’t really afford to spend more than $1,000 on it (not exaggerating).

For those of us on tighter budgets, there are “summer camp” dogsled excursions offered in both Skagway and Juneau. The two options are both run by the same company and feature dogs who actually race in the snow during the winter but need to keep their strength up during the summer so that they’ll be ready for the next season. Meeting the dogs was, of course, going to be plenty exciting on its own for two animal lovers—but we thought the prospect of having them pull us on a modified, wheeled sled, along a dirt track just sounded too good to pass up.

We tried to do a little research into which of the two Port Adventures was better—Skagway or Juneau—and even though we already had another excursion planned for our Skagway day (we weren’t about to skip the train), we thought that this version sounded slightly superior. Here is the description of the “Musher’s Camp & Sled Dog Experience” from the Disney Cruise website:

On this tour you will:

Meet your friendly guides at the dock and head out of Skagway. Your guides will give you a narrated account of its rich Gold Rush history and present-day community. Then, you can relax during the 9-mile (approximately 40 minutes) seaside drive to the northern most point of the Lynn Canal, the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park and our Musher’s Camp.

Switch into our thrilling 4×4 Unimog vehicles and be driven up 1.5 miles of off-road fun. At the top you will meet the dogs and climb onto awheeled sled custom made for running during the snow-less summer months. The husky team will whisk you along a one-mile, wooded trail through some of the Southeast Alaska’s beautiful temperate rainforest.

Meet a fun dog musher and learn about the hard work, dedication and energy involved in this wonderful and rewarding sport.

Before you leave, don’t forget to snuggle with our adorable husky puppies and enjoy some free time to visit with the dogs. You can inspect the racing gear and equipment and, of course, remember to snap some photos memorializing this truly unique Alaskan adventure, before travelling back to the pier.

Doesn’t it sound fantastic? Well, we met back at the dock as described and boarded the small bus that would be taking us up to the dogsled camp.

I honestly wish I’d written down the name of our driver/tour guide because she was fantastic! Like so many others who made Skagway their home during the summer, she spent the rest of the year living elsewhere (Arizona, in her case) and then headed north when the cruise season began.

She drove us through town and then out of Skagway itself into the wilderness.

As we went, she told us some stories about the town’s history (a few of which we’d already heard on the train this morning), but she also went into what it’s like to live there. To get to the nearest shopping mall, the nearest Walmart, the nearest chain restaurants, and the nearest movie theatre, you had to drive about two-and-a-half hours and cross the border into Canada. This place was seriously removed from civilization.

Of course, I can’t really argue that it’s not enticing to live here as we saw all these lovely sights out the windows.

It’s really difficult to see in the pictures, but we spotted a seal hanging out in the body of water to the side of the road.

She also told us that the morning group had gotten to see a bear, so we were hopeful he’d still be lurking around somewhere.

It doesn’t take too much stretching of the imagination to understand what once went on at “The House of Bodily Needs,” which we passed as we drove.

Soon, we’d passed into a National Historic Park, which was another indicator that we were heading off the beaten path and into the wilderness.

I just loved some of these views.

Eventually, we pulled into the first stop on our tour, which was the base camp. This was where we’d be meeting puppies at the end of our excursion, but first, it was where we would be boarding the Unimog that would take us up to the the actual sled dogs.

You can guess which direction we were heading.

Now, the Unimog part of the experience is what actually sold us on the Skagway version of the excursion as opposed to the “Dog Sled Summer Camp” in Juneau. What the heck is a Unimog? That’s a question we had too, but it turns out that these giant 4×4 vehicles are actually manufactured by Mercedes, and they are designed to handle rugged off-road terrain as well as really steep hills.

I don’t remember what the theme of our Unimog was exactly, but I really wanted to ride the green one next to ours that was affectionately named “Kermit the Mog.”

We all piled in and took our seats.

Tracy and I were situated in the back row, near our guide (which would come in handy when the narration wasn’t broadcasting too well over the intercom system once the vehicle was in motion).