The alarm was set for 5:30 but we woke up at 5. They started boarding the ferry for Skagway at 6:30 for the 7:15 departure. The ship was the M/V Mantanuska. It only took one hour to get to Skagway. When we left the weather was split pea soup fog. You couldn't see beyond the bow of the ship. Thank goodness it lifted some on the trip.
We drove to our camp at Dyea, this is in the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park. I fixed us a quick bite to eat and we went to the Ranger station at camp for maps and information. We drove to Slide Cemetery and the old Dyea Townsite. To get there we crossed the Taiya River bridge and saw rafters. The Dyea Townsite was started as a staging area for the "stampeders" starting their trip to the goldfields. There is only one remnant of the 1898 buildings -- they call it the "false front".
Jim found out Skagway has two brewpubs. The first one we stopped at was Gold Rush Restaurant and Brewery. Their beers weren't that great. We ordered a gold pan full of french fries. They did have free wi-fi. We continued into town and went to main street (there were three cruise ships in dock today) and looked around. This town is really just a tourist destination. Skagway gets 900,000 cruise ship visitors per year. These big cruise ships didn't stop at Haines. Haines wasn't crowded and Skagway was.
We stopped at the information center and the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park main office. We walked around and looked at some of the old buildings. One of them had thousands of pieces of driftwood attached to its facade. We then headed for Skagway Brewing. Jim got a t-shirt and I got a hat with a bottle opener built into the bill. The couple in Haines who had the Burro on the truck bed had a very neat coffee pot. Jim found one like it in Skagway at the hikers outfitter store. This coffee pot will be used when we don't have electricity instead of making instant. It is a drip camp coffee pot. Then we drove to the Gold Rush Cemetery and Reid Falls. Most of the people buried here died in 1898, the year of the gold rush. On the way back to camp we saw harbor seals in the Taiya River. We will only stay one day here and tomorrow we will start the turnaround trip home.
P.S. The sun came out around 2 pm and stayed out the rest of the day, the temperature was 64, on this our last full day in Alaska.
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