Skagway

The next stop on our trip was Skagway. This town - which is soooo tiny - is the home of the White Pass and Yukon Route. I want to say they said the town is only, like, 10 blocks by 5 blocks. Tiny. It was a railway that was built to take gold hunters (or stampeders) into the mountains and into Canada. We took the railway tour... you can see that the tracks ran right up to the side of our ship.

There are a lot of scenery pictures in this grouping and I apologize. I kept hoping I would capture the beauty of this place, but it just didn't happen.

Below is the Gold Rush Cemetery. There are two graves in this cemetery that holds the remains of the two most famous people in town: Soapy Smith and Frank Reid. They both died after a duel... a big deal in that town!

Our train...

There is an interesting story attached to this one... see how it looks like a circle of green around a big ol' white rock? Well, it is... in 1898 a blasting accident buried railroad workers and their pack mules under this 100-ton granite rock. The foreman of the crew placed a black cross on their resting place (you can barely see it)... hence the name of this location is "Black Cross Rock". Kind of humbling to know there are bodies still there, huh?

This is a look back down the mountain... the two white dots in the middle of the picture are a couple of cruise ships that are in town for the day!

These are some level 6 rapids that have never been navigated successfully. I, for one, wouldn't want to try... there are a lot of BIG boulders and cold water down there.

Heading up the mountain it started snowing on us. It was beautiful.

I doubt you can see them but there are three mountain goats in this picture. I know where they are... I'll have to see if I can figure out a way to circle them somehow.

This is a steel bridge that was built in 1901 and used until 1969. It was considered the tallest cantilever bridge in the world. It is crossing a huge ravine... I was scared to death. (We didn't go over it or I would have died)

This is at the end of the line - White Pass Summit. We had to stop and make some maneuvers with other trains that were following us. Can you believe the snow? We were in Canada and at 2,865 feet. This is where the mounted police waved on gold rush stampeders with a ton of supplies, needed for one year in the north. If they didn't have the appropriate amount of supplies they were denied entry.

Back down in town we walked around a bit. I got a beautiful whale tail necklace and we ate lunch at a local bar. This is the Red Onion Saloon -- it was the only brothel in town. It is haunted by one of the girls, too! We just walked in to look around... it was packed full of folks wanting to eat with a ghost. All of the sidewalks were wooden boards, too. I loved the way they sounded as we walked on them.

This is our ship on the way back. I am trying to capture how tiny our ship looked next to the huge mountain. You are looking at the ship straight on... the long set of windows is the captain's bridge. Amazing. When I looked up and saw it, it literally took my breath away.

I can't wait to show you the next set of pictures. They are from our cruise up Tracy Arm Fjord... where we passed another Princess ship and went INTO the ice flow. It was awesome!