Day 42

This morning we heard the horn of a cruise ship as it was coming into port. The Yukon Scenic Railway tracks are right behind our RV park so we got to see two trainloads of people from the cruise ship as they went by. I would have waved to them but I didn’t have my makeup on.

Our first stop was the Gold Rush Cemetery and Reid Falls (the falls are right behind the cemetery). The cemetery contains graves and headstones from the 1800s. The falls were beautiful and while trying for a closer picture, Jan slipped and ended up on his rear. We had to stop at the trailer so he could change pants before we ventured on.

We went to downtown Skagway and strolled through the some of the shops. We ran into Jerry & Nancy and arranged to meet for lunch. Jan remembered that when we were here on our cruise, we saw an old rusty locomotive sitting on unused tracks; after lunch we went on a quest to find it. It didn’t take long to locate it (Skagway isn’t that big). There were old box cars attached to the locomotive and a rusty bulldozer and rusty steam shovel were nearby. We spent a lot of time checking them out and taking pictures.

Later in the afternoon, we drove down Dyea (pronounced die-ee) Road to the site of the old Dyea Township. It was a big town during the Gold Rush until the railroad was completed in Skagway and everyone left. All that remains now are a few pieces of wood and one false front from a real estate office. We ran into a ranger who told us the history of the town and showed us pictures of what it looked like in the 1800s; it was pretty interesting. As we drove back along the Taiya River, we stopped at a number of viewpoints to take pictures.

After dinner, we drove back to downtown Skagway to see it when everyone is gone (it’s pretty busy when a cruise ship is in port). There were very few people out and it was really quiet. Skagway is a very pretty town and we were glad to have time to explore it. When we were there before, we hardly saw any of it because our excursions took us out of town.