good morning from skagway
i'm stephen she's andie and today we're gonna do a diy tour of this alaskan gold mining town
rather than booking an official cruise excursion today we decided to check out the town of skagway
on our own hello how are you we hit up the neighborhood coffee and ice cream spots get some
lunch at a local brewery and take in a little of the town's gold rush history at a brothel museum
it's just before 10 a.m. and the first order of business is to find a local coffee spot
so i gotta say we're pretty spoiled on this cruise because i think our ship is only about 50 percent
occupied right now which means that we don't have all the crowds and the lines that you always hear
are problematic on cruises and also we've been the only ship in each port of call that we've been to
so far which means the towns aren't completely crawling with tourists the way you hear about
happening so it's been really really nice makes it so easy to get around avoid crowds and really get
to see things as quickly as you'd like to and trip as you walk and not look ahead of you it does suck
though for the local economy because obviously they need the tourism to survive and they've
really been hurting the last couple of years hopefully everything gets back to normal soon
and in the meantime we're very happy to be spoiled in this way and get the experience we're getting
the white pass at 2,865 feet received significant snowfall from late september until early june
this is a 129 ton rotary snowplow that could carve
through the snow and drifts that this whole region gets
this building behind me was built in 1899 and 60 percent of the facade is still original
this town has such a charming kind of wild west feel to it it all came up during the gold rush
at the very very end of the 1800s which we just learned only lasted about one year
by the time the rush came out here most of the gold that was easily accessible had already been
panned and taken out of the region so the gold rush was basically over before it even began
we also learned that almost all of these buildings or at least a large majority of them
are original to that era smoked salmon reindeer shaved ice doesn't sound so good
as was common in frontier towns the men came first and then the women followed
and in particular prostitutes first it was very common and just kind of a normal thing
then it became more regulated and eventually it was all outlawed
but during skagway's boom there was an eight block stretch of road that had 80 brothels
we decided to tour one of these historic brothels which is now set up as a museum
as you might expect the tour was abundantly laced with double entendres
now this is a brothel museum folks brothel museum but i assure you i'm very good at my oral history
now my friends as you can see after all those years this light here is still turned on
it's important to note that as playful and sometimes glamorous
as tourist attractions like this may make it seem
women turned to prostitution because they had very few career options and certainly
none as profitable also many women were horribly abused while working in these industries so these
are important facts to keep in mind before we glamorize and or condemn the women who worked here
all right we worked up a bit of an appetite here so i think we're going to try to find
some place for lunch looks like the skagway brewing company is open so
we're going to give that a try see if they've got anything good for us there
since we're in the land of king crab alaskan king crab that is we're going to try a couple of apps
related to that this is crab and artichoke dip and this is alaskan king crab cakes
i don't think i've ever seen tires that big on a bike before
one more stop before all aboard we gotta try the ice cream
we are going to chow down on this and then head right back up to the ship
thank you guys so much for watching we really appreciate you coming with
us on this adventure and we cannot wait to take you on the next one see you next time