Thursday 14th May
Arrived in Skagway about 630am. Met on pier at 730am to catch the train up through White Pass into Canada and then a coach back down the Klondike Highway into Skagway. Scary, scary, scary! We travelled on the side of a mountain with about a million foot drop on the other side! Well that's what it looked like to me! I spent a fair bit of the trip with my back to the window but what I did see was just amazing! The train follows the path of the stampeders who came in1898 for the Klondike gold rush. About 40,000 Made it and when you see the terrain they had to get through, it was amazing that anyone got to the gold fields! The scenery was unbelievable and when we got to the top, we travelled through the most amazing snow, pristine  and untouched, beautiful! There was this place called Black Cross Rock where this massive, and I mean massive, boulder fell on to two guys crushing them to death. They couldn't lift the rock to recover their bodies so they put a black cross on top with their names on it and their bodies are still there today. We went through tunnels, over bridges and finally got to the top where we saw Lake Bennett. We had to sit on the train until Canadian customs came and checked our passports and then we hopped off and caught the coach back.great trip. When we got back to Skagway, we walked about 2kms back to the Gold Rush  Cemetery. Thought of Mum here and how much she would have loved reading the gravestones. The majority of them were from 1898 and 1899.   From there we walked up to Reid Falls and then back into Skagway where the ship left port about 5pm. That night we were sitting in the cabin when we heard an aircraft, it was unbelievable, we were in the middle of nowhere And suddenly there is this Defence Force cargo plane circling the ship! Quite close too! Obviously not a lot to do, at one stage it looked like it was going to come right in to the cabin! Veered off at the last minute. It was quite exciting