The Joneses Go Cruising, Part 5: Skagway All Day

Our next stop was the small but interesting town of Skagway. You may recall that Skagway is a setting in The Call of the Wild. The town sprung into existence during the Alaskan gold rush of the late 1880s, and soon became the supply place for miners who were heading north to find gold. Today it is purely a tourist town.

A sign in town says that the population is around 800, with many more in the summer.

Skagway is famous for the old train tracks that go all the way up the mountain and into Canada. Taking a train ride is "the thing to do" in Skagway, so we did it.

Most of these pictures were taken out the train window--excuse the glare.

 Once again, the beautiful of the scenery was breathtaking.

On this mountain, you can clearly see the effects of all the rain.  Tree roots, not needing to grow deeply for moisture, are  very shallow, and if one tree falls over in even a small avalanche, all of the trees below go with it. You could see these treeless strips on many mountains in this area.

We went through a couple of picturesque tunnels on our way up the mountain.



This may not be the place to take a step outside. It's a loonnng way down.

The river down below is a category 6 for all of you whitewater rafters,

and has never been successfully navigated.

When building the railroad, a couple of men got caught in a rock avalanche.  Lacking the ability to bring the bodies back up, the railroad crew just left them, buried under tons of rock.

Have I mentioned how I've fallen in love with Alaskan scenery?

There were three trains on the track with us-this is one of them.  When we got to the top, we had to do a tricky trade-places maneuver using a second track.

There was a old part of the track no longer in use near the top. It proved too difficult to remove, so they just left it and built a new track some distance away,

View from the top.....

After our little ride, Stan and I decided to explore Skagway. We found this visitor's center, formerly a fraternity house, made entirely from driftwood.

We found the first home in Skagway, built in 1888.

We gave ourselves a free, self-guided tour. It was completely restored, using the family's extensive journals and photos.

We noticed many homes in town that collected these blue bottles and incorporated them into fences.  I later found out they were a famous Alaskan beer. I guess you have to have something to do something in the winter.

We walked to the cemetery, which someone told us was about 1.5 miles down the road.  It was actually more like 150 miles, uphill both ways, with the Alaskan sun beating down on us.  We are convinced all of the walking we did on this day is the reason neither of us gained a single pound on the trip.

This unique "tombstone" makes one think gold was important to these people. I had to wonder which lucky descendant was responsible to keep the boulder gold.

This cemetery was used until 1906. There was a meningitis epidemic that swept through the town in 1896, and most of the headstones had that date on them.

It was actually a very peaceful setting to rest and wait for the resurrection.

Just above the cemetery was Reed Falls. We figured we had already walked over a hundred miles, what's a few more?

We loved the scenery so much, we thought we'd check out the real estate. This little starter house on the town's busiest street was only $660,000. Hmm. There was no garage, no basement, and the flowers were fake--some plastic, some silk. Maybe we'll pass.

We found a wonderful (and free) museum, but Stan started getting too friendly with the natives, so we headed back to the ship for the day.