We arrive at Skagway at 6:00 AM.  That was earlier than they predicted so we couldn’t watch them pull in, darn.  We always like to judge the dockings…..reminds us of our slip at Sunnyside and doing the judging at the gas dock 

Our balcony looked right at a rock wall

Nice view….not!

but we could see the train for the train ride we’d be taking later.

There’s our train!

Well, we had a few hours to kill before we left for our excursion so we decided to hike into town and see what’s what.  It was only a few blocks into town so not a big walk.  As we headed into town we had to stop by the 

Where else does a boater want to go to?  We saw that they had what looked to be a ferry

Ferry boat (The big red thing)

Look at the cute little harbor seal

Aaaaah

And I think this boat delivered propane to some of the more desolate areas

Propane anyone?

See all those white things on the aft deck?  Those are all propane bottles.  I wonder if he uses the helicopter for the more difficult deliveries?

We passed this restaurant on the way to town

Want some crabs?

A little unusual exterior, I’d love to see the inside.  Looks like they have the wicked witch chained up.  Once we got into town we saw this building

Wood building

made of small pieces of wood.  Pretty cool looking.  The whole town reminded me of an old western town

Wild, Wild, West but what a view!

but you could tell that main street was all about tourism.  All they had were touristy stuff.  They must have had 5 jewelry stores and they were all hawking their wears.  Apparently if you are from a cruise ship, you get a free bracelet and 2 free charms at each city we stoped in, so each jewelry store you pass, there was someone by the door trying to lure you in with the free charms.  But you know they are just trying to get you to buy something expense.  Luckily for Gary, I am not a big shopper so we did most of our shopping with our eyes and stayed out on the sidewalks.

When we had seen all we could, we headed back to the ship.  We passed this on the way

Show train

Snow Plow

well….I guess they do get some snow up there, don’t they?

Here is me in front of the ship

Big Ship

Jeans, coat, long sleeve shirt, hat, yah, it’s cold here.

So it was finally time to go on our excursion.  After re-reading the details of our excursion that we bought at Costco, at a much cheaper rate than the Carnival excursions, turns out that was not our train.  We had to catch a bus first in town that would take us to the train.

As you can tell by the clothing, it warmed up some, I was able to dump the coat and the long sleeve shirt.  Our first excursion was a White Pass Summit Rail and Bus Excursion.  We were heading into Canada, so we had to bring our passports.  We had to hunt around a little to find our bus driver but once we found him and got settled, I took this picture

Oh Boy! Our first excursion!

I look like I left my teeth at home LOL.  Our bus driver just dumped us off at the train and said he’d see us later.  One of the groups on the bus wanted his phone number in case he didn’t show up at the end of the line or if we couldn’t find him.  He laughed and said there was no service where we were going but they shouldn’t worry, he’d find us.  I hope so, I wouldn’t want to be stuck up in Canada for the rest of my life

Those people who bought their excursions from Carnival had a tour guide and

Headsets?

what are those things on their heads?  Oh yah, they get the better verbalized tour by wearing those fancy headsets.  We had to settle for the guy on the train over the speakers that you could hardly hear because the train wheels were so squeeky.  Well, I guess you get what you pay for 

So here we are on our train

Our Train

Do you see that wall on the right?  That’s the bathroom.  Gary and I wonder about the people who, no matter what you’re traveling on, whether it be a plane, a bus or a train, that as soon as they are able, they have to run and use the toilet.  I mean come on!  Didn’t your mother teach you to always go to the bathroom before you left on a trip?  I have to confess, I do like to check out bathrooms, see the decor and maybe how the toilets work ya know.  Just for curiosity sake mind you, not to actually USE the toilet, but I know these people just can’t wait to tinkle.  But geez!  Have a little bladder control will ya?  Whew!  I’m glad I got that off my chest.

Anyway, back to the train ride.  I picked the seat and again, I picked the wrong side, again.  You’d think I’d learn after that train ride we took in Tennessee where we looked at a rock wall for an hour and a half up and an hour and half down.  Everything on this ride was out the left window so we had to keep standing up or go to the very front or rear of the train and stand outside on the platform to see anything.  We did learn somethings from the voice coming out of the speaker.  We learned that this is where the gold miners had to travel the White Pass Summit or the Chilkoot trail to get to the Yukon River that they would then sail down to the Klondike where all the gold was supposed to be (turns out there wasn’t much if any there).  Before the Canadian government would let these miners cross the border, they had to bring 2000 pounds of supplies with them so they wouldn’t starve getting to Klondike.  Now those miners could only carry 40 or 50 pounds at a time so it took them several trip up and down this treacherous trail.  They’d beat their mules trying to get them to haul the stuff up the mountainous path.  It was told that some of the mules jumped to their death in order to get away from the men.

They started building a railroad in 1898 to replace the path the men had to travel.  During the building of that rail, a HUGE bolder fell off the face of the mountain and crushed two miners and their mules.  No one tried to save them because they knew they were dead.  They just placed a cross at the site which is still there today.  It’s probably not the original cross, I’m sure it’s maintained by someone to keep the story alive 

Anyway, seeing as I was on the wrong side of the train I didn’t get a picture of that but I got these cool pictures

Nice steam

That’s the old bridge, keep those beavers away

That’s the front of our train on the new much better bridge

Nice River

Right before we go into a tunnel

All the excursions seemed to be handled by temporary summer workers that lived someplace else during the winter.  I don’t know, it can still get pretty cold here even in the summer.  I think I’d find some place else to get a summer job.

We got off the train and hopped on the bus.  The bus took us the rest of the way to the Canadian border.  After we crossed the border, the Canadian Border Patrol guys got on the bus and looked at our passports.  I guess we didn’t have any illegal aliens on board because the bus driver jumped on and we were off.  The driver stopped at a few non touristy spots so we could get some pictures

He also took some pictures of Gary and I together 

While we were driving down the road back to the ship, I kept seeing these

What is this?

I was wondering what they were.  Gary said it was probably to mark the road so when the show plows came they could tell where the road was and not drive off the cliff.  Mind you, these poles were 20 feet high.  Geez!  I’d hate to be up there during a big snow storm.  I guess that is why I live in Florida now .

All in all it was a great excursion.  We learned a lot about the Gold Rush, saw some beautiful scenery and had a fun train ride.  We got back to the ship and decided to have a few drinks while we waited for the ship to leave.  As we sat in one of our favorite spots, we watch helicopter after helicopter fly past, 4 at a crack, taking people on some kind of excursion.  Then we saw this one

Supply delivery

We wondered where the heck he was going to deliver supplies that way?  Oh well, we enjoyed our drinks and contemplated our next stop…..the capital of Alaska…..Juneau.