Land excursions at Skagway, Juneau & Ketchikan

[abhisheks77]

Hi,

 

We are going with NCL in first week of June. Have few questions. Please help me with them.

 

(1) I have booked rental car at Skagway, to see Yukon and back. It was online and no credit card details were asked. I hope that is normal and would consider it guaranteed booking and they don't do overbooking :-) . But I was little worried about crowd. A cruise will arrive and most of 3500+ passenger will like to get down and many of them would like to pick rental. Being less road options, wouldn't it be slow one lane driving for long ?
Is it a single road till Yukon and I have to backtrack exact same road in evening ?

 

(2) At Juneau, we can again rent car and drive till Eagle Beach. Mendenhall Glacier and the walk to Nugget Falls are also options, while driving back from Eagle Beach. Cruise will stay there from 7:00am to 1:30pm. Probably we will have time from 8:00 to 12:30. 
- Is this time sufficient to go and come back ?
- How much walk is there, if we want to see Mendenhall Glacier & Nugget Falls? We are with 3 years old, so long walk will not be possible.

 

(3) At Ketchikan, cruise will halt from 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM. Have enough time to roam around for 6-7 hours. Looks like, we have less options and may not worth a rental car here ? Should I keep this day as walking and relaxing day ?

 

Thanks

[mapleleaves]

1.   Most people only drive as far as Emerald Lake, which is about 75 miles from skagway.  You have more than enough time !  On average I'd say people do this is 4-6 hrs.

Description of the drive with suggested stopping points.  

https://www.themilepost.com/highways/south-klondike-highway/

 

2.   Mendenhall Glacier is about a 20-30 minute drive each way.  Most people take an hr for the RT walk to Nuggett Falls for a photo opp.  1 mile each way.   If you want a shorter walk, do the Photo Point trail.   Trail info :

https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd604841.pdf

 

Eagle Beach is about 30 miles from downtown.  Look at the map on pg 26 of the Juneau Visitor Guide.

 

Decide which location is most important, Mendenall or Eagle Beach, and go there first.  How much time you spend there will determine if you have time for the 2nd location.

 

3.  if you want to walk around and explore ketchikan, there's a  Walking Tour map and lots of tourism info in this link:

https://www.experienceketchikan.com/

[Crew News]

20 hours ago, abhisheks77 said:

Hi,

 

We are going with NCL in first week of June. Have few questions. Please help me with them.

 

(1) I have booked rental car at Skagway, to see Yukon and back. It was online and no credit card details were asked. I hope that is normal and would consider it guaranteed booking and they don't do overbooking 🙂 . But I was little worried about crowd. A cruise will arrive and most of 3500+ passenger will like to get down and many of them would like to pick rental. Being less road options, wouldn't it be slow one lane driving for long ?
Is it a single road till Yukon and I have to backtrack exact same road in evening ?

 

Thanks

 

Skagway has more than one pier so you need to up your passenger number to near 8000.    The road to the Yukon is one lane each directions but during the warm months you will encounter road construction that will cut that to only one shared lane for both directions.  Fortunately, there is very little traffic.

[abhisheks77]

Thank you. This is very helpful information.

[TMLAalum]

Thought it's been awhile since we rented a car through AVIS in Skagway, my advice is to get off the ship ASAP and head directly to whatever car rental agency office you've reserved your vehicle with.  We were among the first in line to do the paperwork and get the keys to our car. The line behind us was quite long. We made it beyond Emerald Lake to the Carcross Desert. One of the best souvenirs of that day was the very unique passport stamp we received when we crossed back into the U.S.