The bus picked us up at our RV park at 7:40AM and then went downtown. Downtown they picked up both people taking the tour and people taking the bus to Skagway. The bus trip was to Fraser, BC where we would board the train. The train goes to Skagway and we take the bus back to Whitehorse after being in Skagway for a few hours.
Pictures from the bus trip to Fraser, BC.
Pictures from the train ride down to Skagway, Part 1, Part 2
After US Customs cleared us to get off the train we had about three hours to spend in Skagway and there were five cruise ships in town, four huge ones and one small one. It was crowded. We were looking for lunch and the first couple places we stopped at were crowded. But, as we got further from the cruise ships the crowds thinned and we found a nice, funky place to eat lunch, Sabrosa. They served coffee, sweets and Mexican food. They had a special that was something like chillequelies (sp?) and was excellent.
Here is the main shopping street of Skagway, Broadway, looking south to the cruise ships.
The closer to the cruise ships you were the more the place resembled a Caribbean cruise port with the same jewelry stores and "Little Switzerland". When we were in town off a cruise ship in 2000 most all the stores were local.
Here is a display on someone special:
There were interesting signs with information all over town, including one recreated saloon.
On the cliff to the east were some painted signs, but this was the largest:
The large cruise ships in town, we never did see the small one.
The RVs are waiting to take the ferry, probably only the short run to Haines.
The snow plow for the train line:
Since our cell phones worked and were not roaming we made some calls to family while in town.
While we were calling the wind came up and we had some rain drops, so we were glad we had already played tourist and that the weather was good for pictures from the train and for the first part of our visit to Skagway.
We ended up buying a couple items at the stores and had espresso and hot chocolate at Sabrosa. Our mail package was at the post office and had been for days.
We needed to be at the bus at 4:30PM and made it in plenty of time since the weather was not as friendly as earlier.