August 2-4 Just resting & Skagway

August 2 - Yesterday Gary got a haircut, today I got one.  Just kind of hung out. We drove around and explored a little more of the town and Fort Seward. We ate dinner at the Fireweed and had really good pizza.   Did our regular fishing/bear watching routine except tonight the bears were really late arriving.  Both Gary and Roger were out in the middle fishing when I saw a guy next to Gary pointing downstream.  At the same time I saw the sow with the 3 cubs on the other side of the river.  I got Gary's attention and he packed it up and came to the truck.  Then we saw Roger just leaning on a rock trying to decide if it was safe to go back to the road.  He finally got back and all was well. No fish for us though; Gary lost all his lures on the rocks. Two caravans moved into the campground today - 6 or 7 big motorhomes each.

August 3 - We are really getting lazy.  I've been having some problems with my hip - a lingering result of somehow irritating it when we were fishing in Soldotna. Mostly bothers me when I do stairs or when in bed and trying to roll over.  Gary visited with one of the caravan guys and found out they've been on the road since April. From Alaska they'll go to Yellowstone and end at the Balloon Festival in Albuquerque in October.

About noon we took the girls and went for a walk to a wholefoods-type deli down the street and had a sandwich - really yummy homemade bread.  They we walked up to the fair ground to take some pictures of Dalton City that, as I mentioned before, was the movie lot for "White Fang." Jane and Roger moved into our campground today in preparation for our trip to Skagway tomorrow. After a dinner of salmon we'll be off for our standard evening fishing/bear watching activities.

August 4 - Today we took the 9:00 am ferry to Skagway.  It is 16 miles and about a 45 minutes ride.  If you drive from Haines to Skagway it's 350 miles.  We could have taken the big ferry and driven from Skagway but the road from Skagaway to Whitehorse is very steep and we were afraid our transmission would get hot on such a long pull.

There were 3 big cruise ships in Skagway and loads of people.  Two thirds of the stores are jewelry stores - a real tourist trap. It's a cute time because they've kept the old-time style buildings.  We had a nice lunch with Jane and Roger and then we were off to the train.

$20 each for a half hour ride



An old-time bar

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