1st full day in Skagway--July 28

Last night I prepared my laundry for this morning. By 7am I was off to the laundramat in the park while Bob slept in, at least for awhile I guess. While the wash and dryer did its thing I met a man and wife who had come from Wyoming by covered wagon and finally parked it in some farmer's ground while they came ahead up here. They said the drivers almost killed them 3 times. Nice people. If you want to read about their experiences go to wyomingwagonadventures.com. Their names are Mike and Sheila. They were real nice people. After putting all that away I finally got to eat-lunch. Then I started writing one of the blogs because I was behind 2 days and if I can stay awake long enough till I finish this one and don't go blind I will be caught up. Marv and Dee rode with us into town to the "Days of '98 Show". It is the longest running show in the North and is held is Alaska's oldest Eagles aerie,F.O.E. #25 established in 1899. It is a 1 hr. musical/drama based on historical records and centers on con man Jefferson (Soapy) Smith's reign over Skagway during the days of the Klondike Gold Rush. It was very entertaining--definitely worth seeing. After that we walked around town into a few shops, down toward the train station and made it thru all the people because there were 4 cruise ships in port (ugh). The ships were sure beautiful. I tell you we are at least getting foreign tourism money into this country if nothing else. A bunch of our group was taking the White Pass/Yukon train ride and one of them had parked in a loading zone and a policeman on a bike saw our coats (Adventure caravans) which matched the large yellow sticker on the back of the car and asked if we knew the owner of the car so we started looking for them in the nearby stores no realizing they were loading on the train. Luckily we found the tailgunner who got their keys and moved their car before they got a ticket or worse.

It was dinner time so we found a restaurant and afterwards took a ride out to Dyea looking for bears fishing but didn't see any, but it was a beautiful drive. More about that another day. Tomorrow is a big day so I need to get to bed.