5th cruise day Skagway

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Today we woke to be in Skagway. A pretty town pop 800 and a sunny day with no wind. The town sits at the mouth of a large valley that finishes at an inlet where we are berthed. The town is clean and all painted up in a recreation of a cowboy town including all the classic shopfronts and wooden sidewalks - only the cars and the bitumen road bought it into the 21st century. I don’t know this, but its an ideal movie set if that hasn’t already been done here at some time. Maurs found a quilt shop and bough some Alaska fabric. We met up with our dinner table friends at The Red Onion and we all had lunch. The Red Onion was an old 19th century brothel that is now a bar/pub. After lunch we went on a 4 hr round trip train ride on the White Pass & Yukon Route Railway which has 3 diesels pulling 12 carriages. This rail service started about 1899 at the time the Klondike gold rush was just finishing. This town was created by the late 19th century gold rush in the Yukon which is about 150 miles thru the valleys over the border in British Columbia in Canada. The actual train route goes to Whitehorse in Yukon Territory Canada 110 miles away but our trip today was only 20 miles up to White Pass just over the Canadian border. The train climbed all the time for 2 hours along the sides of mountains and into some valleys before crossing over bridges to run around another mountain side finally rising 3000 feet at White Pass. We went thru 2 tunnels. The scenery was great, canyons, waterfall, snow all over, trees, all the mountains are topped with snow and the higher we went the more snow was evident, so at the end at White Pass it was all snow and we passed 2 frozen lakes that were just beginning to thaw (you can see small green pools of water where the thawing starts). The train actually turned around 20 miles upt he line just over the Canada border so we weren’t allowed out. Back on board ship about 5.00pm, exhausted and ready for afternoon tea in the Lido overlooking this pretty town.

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