What a difference a day makes, after our glorious day for the glacier flight we leave Haines in the rain for the short ferry trip to Skagway.
Skagway was one of the trail start points for the Klondike gold-rush with prospectors arriving from Seattle & San Francisco before a 400 mile journey to Dawson City.
Any successful Gold prospector from those times thoroughly deserved their riches although in reality it was mostly the shops & bar owners that made the big money.
Nowadays the Gold for this area comes from visiting cruise ships & you can see that they dock right at the bottom of the main street.
Four of these monsters arrive every day & they dwarf the restored buildings which mostly now house jewellery & gift shops (some actually owned by the cruise lines!). The town itself has several interesting gold-rush related museums & is very much kept in the character from those times.
The 'White Pass & Yukon Railway' is one of the main attractions & is the reason the town survived, initially serving the gold mining it was later used to supply the construction of the Alaska Highway in 1942, now it's just for tourists.
We take a ride up the White Pass & come across this guy by the side of the road.
More mountains again but similar to the rest of the area, can you get mountained out?
Dyea use to be another town at the start of the Chilkoot trail but after Skagway got the train it died, this is all that's left!
Our ferry leaves on the 21st June taking us down the Inner Passage to Prince Rupert, the departure is at 7.15am & initially the weather is not looking too bad.
This was the route taken by the gold-rush ships & several lighthouses were constructed at the time, this hexagonal one at Eldred Rock is the only surviving original one from 1905.
The ship docks at several points along the way including Petersburg, we also catch sight of a few killer whales but they are too brief for us to grab any pictures.
At Ketchikan there is the largest dry-dock in Alaska & busy float-plane activity, the route is very scenic but persistent rainfall & low cloud means we don't see it at its best.
The ferry docks at 2.15am so for the first & hopefully the last we ride a few hours in the dark, & rain, the headlights look a little dim at first but we get used to it.
Skagway was one of the trail start points for the Klondike gold-rush with prospectors arriving from Seattle & San Francisco before a 400 mile journey to Dawson City.
Any successful Gold prospector from those times thoroughly deserved their riches although in reality it was mostly the shops & bar owners that made the big money.
Nowadays the Gold for this area comes from visiting cruise ships & you can see that they dock right at the bottom of the main street.
The 'White Pass & Yukon Railway' is one of the main attractions & is the reason the town survived, initially serving the gold mining it was later used to supply the construction of the Alaska Highway in 1942, now it's just for tourists.
We take a ride up the White Pass & come across this guy by the side of the road.
More mountains again but similar to the rest of the area, can you get mountained out?
Dyea use to be another town at the start of the Chilkoot trail but after Skagway got the train it died, this is all that's left!
This was the route taken by the gold-rush ships & several lighthouses were constructed at the time, this hexagonal one at Eldred Rock is the only surviving original one from 1905.
The ship docks at several points along the way including Petersburg, we also catch sight of a few killer whales but they are too brief for us to grab any pictures.
At Ketchikan there is the largest dry-dock in Alaska & busy float-plane activity, the route is very scenic but persistent rainfall & low cloud means we don't see it at its best.
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