Skagway
Arriving in Skagway at 7am led to another walk in a closed town that hangs on to some history but really only thrives on the seasonal cruise ship stopping from May to October.  We walked the length of the town past mostly yet to open shops filled with souvenirs and jewelry stores owned by many of the cruise ships.  There are about a half dozen jewelry and luxury shops which seems to dot only towns frequented by cruise lines.  They seemed to have a captured audience for their high end jewelry which seems an unlikely match diamonds in Alaska or the Caribbean but with little competition and passengers with nothing better to shop many that are older and are finding fewer luxuries to spend their wealth on but the next cruise or shopping at the next port of call.

White Pass railway tour, was the main activity in Skagway and I convinced Yum it beat loitering in the half a mile town.  She succumbed and we embarked on a three hour tour re-tracing the route of gold prospectors long gone and other travelers that took the White Pass train to get in or out of Skagway to port or the Canadian border.  I spend most of the trip out on the train car landing taking pictures in the forty five degree temperature adding wind chill to the excitement of rising thousands of feet to the snow cover just across the Canadian border to Alaska.  I surveyed lots of trees, melt fed streams, miles of granite cliffs and finally snow in its final throws of late Spring.