Skagway

Another beautiful sunny day and we've arrived in Skagway - our northernmost point of our trip. Our shore excursion today had another 8am start and we were soon off the ship and on the bus ready to go to Klondike goldrush country. Our informative guide/bus driver indicated various points of interest as we went along but mostly just left us to enjoy the spectacular scenery - high mountains (some with snow on top), glacier blue lakes and the autumn colours of the trees and bushes. Our passports were inspected at the Canadian border and then we were in real Yukon territory.
Thousands of prospectors arrived in this area in the late 1890s to search for gold and stake their claim but as communications were so poor, many of them arrived almost too late and the rush was over.
Although it was a beautiful sunny day again, it was really cold and we could only imagine how these men(and some women) managed to survive in ordinary clothes living in tents and with very little idea of what lay ahead.
After a few quick stops for photos we arrived at the Yukon Suspension Bridge which is strung across a deep gorge with a gushing river cutting its way through the rocks below. There were a lot of old photographs on display along with the story of the goldrush and we came away knowing a lot more than before.
There had been a bit of frost on the ground when we first arrived but the sun started to warm us up a bit by the time we re-boarded the bus.

Back down through the mountains towards Skagway where we stopped at an attraction where we all got a chance to pan for gold (in warm water troughs!). Surprisingly we all got some gold flakes in our pans - unfortunately not enough to pay for the cruise! There was a lot of old artefacts on display including a huge dredge which is basically a machine which pans for gold and a lot of these were in use up until the 1930s.
Back to Skagway on the bus and a walk around the town. Skagway only has a population of about 600 but it swells in the summer with all the seasonal workers and obviously most days when there is a ship (or ships) in town its a lot busier. The season ends in about a week on the 29th September and they're expecting the first snow this Friday. Looking down on the town from on board, it looks very pretty today with the blue sky and the mountains and the bustle of the people, the old railroad working away and the helicopters flying in and out taking people sightseeing, but in the winter I guesss it looks a whole lot different. That's when they must really feel like they're at the end of the line.