Day 81

August 18, 2017

45 degrees this morning, daylight escaping rapidly each day, up early to be ready for our day’s activity.  We boarded a bus at 8:15 in front of the park office with a lady driver that came to Whitehorse as a child, now she’s a grandmother and dapper in her cowboy hat.  We drove south on the Alaska Highway to the intersection of the Skagway South Highway and headed for Carcross (original name was Caribou Crossing but there were so many in Yukon they decided to change it to the the first few letters of each old name so their mail would not go to the wrong place).  

The bakery here had some out of sight cinnamon rolls so we shared one, the lady warmed it and put icing on top.  Yum!  

We walked around the town a few minutes before boarding the bus again for our drive to Fraser BC to meet the White Pass & Yukon Railroad where our group had a private car.  

We had a young woman welcome us to the train.

And the conductor came through also.

The ride from Fraser was very scenic

and we crossed the White Pass Summit at 2885 feet altitude in the clouds.  

We crossed the international border.

The descent was along the Skagway River and at mile 6 we crossed from BC into Alaska where US Customs came aboard and checked our passports.  Final descent was into Skagway where the two cruise ships were in port.  As it was after 1 PM we made our way to the Red Onion Saloon, built in 1897 to service the thousands of people trying to get to the gold fields in Yukon and Alaska.  The original establishment was a saloon and brothel.  Today it is a restaurant 

and upstairs is maintained as a museum about the original use.  We booked the tour of the upstairs and our guide seemed to have lots of knowledge about how things were done in the day.  US$5 for 15 minutes with the madam receiving half the fee.  With inflation since 1898 the fee for 15 minutes would be $125 for 15 minutes.

We had a short walk, 

bought a t-shirt and boarded our bus for our return trip.  Not as scenic as the train trip but still lots of scenery.  Back to the campground at 6:00p.m.