Tuesday in Skagway Alaska

This was a very exciting day. We had booked our train ride up the White Pass well before setting sail and were looking forward to this trip. Partly because Ron and Bev had already told us a bit about it and partly because it was a trip on a narrow guage railway. Our train ride started early. 8:00 am early. Actually it was 10:00 back home so it was really coffee time! The trip was over 3 hours long going both ways and we would rise almost 3000' in 20 miles! This is a steep climb for a train!

Enjoy the trip with us!

Preparing to dock - close to downtown again!

Boarding the train (first car behind the engines)

Climbing through the forest - the whole train!

Hey, who's that at the other end of the car?

That's where we are going to go!

VERY close to the cliff at one point!

Nearing the top of White Pass.

Remnants of the actual trail of 1898.

The US/Canada Border at the top.

Switching the Engines making us the last car going down!

Trestle Bridge from early 1900's.

No longer in use!

One of two tunnels through the mountain.

Incredible construction for early 1900's!

Fantastic Scenery!

Way down there is our ship!

After our all morning trip up to the White Pass we went back on board the ship to have lunch. We realized Skagway has a very noticable tide. When we left for our train trip in the morning we got off on a ramp looking like this ...

When we came back for lunch it looked like this ...

A read of Pierre Burton's book "The Klondike" will give you a vivid description of Skagway when it was nothing more than a beach and a drifters town with approximately 30 Brothels along with a notorious smooth talking scoundral by the name of Soapy Smith!

After lunch we went back into downtown Skagway to snoop around. Again there was lots of jewellery shops. Ron got some good pictures of the restored original buildings! One stood out, being covered in driftwood! Made for a unique front facade.

Ron also found one of the few empty benches on a side street waiting for Bev and I in the fabric/quilting shop down a few doors. There weren't many resting spots in the town bubbling with four shiploads of people on a warm sunny afternoon!

When supper was done Peter and I had a quiet evening on the bow of the ship waiting to cast off. We left port an hour late because a tour bus with 6 passengers meant to be on our ship was late. I'm sure it created a stir up on the navigational deck in contrast to the peaceful evening we were experiencing without a care in the world! Here's one of my favorite pictures taken that night of my favorite guy!