Our afternoon in Skagway

Yesterday was back to our normal and more evenly paced routine.  Having arrived home very late from Whitehorse we had made arrangements for another to open the church for Monday seminary and we slept in.  Diane worked on reports and a lesson she will be giving in the mornng for seminary.  I worked on my Institute lesson for Wednesday evening.  The Branch President wants us to teach a Temple Preparation class to a 25 year old who is planning on a trip to the San Diego Temple with several members of the branch.  He wants to do his own endowments rather than baptisms for the dead.  I believe there are six going with the Branch President and his wife.  They will be staying with the Schindlers who were the CES missionaries here prior to us. Diane will probably do most of the teaching on this Temple Prep class.

Here are some more of the pics we had fun with while in Skagway.  Did you know you can double click on the pics and see them in a slide show?  The pictures aren't so dark that way.

We had just seen four Orcas in a pod moving in the opposite direction as we were.  And they were moving with a purpose.  At first I thought I was watching more dolphins.  And then as they got more energetic I saw the white on the sides and under bellies.  They were killer whales.

These geraniums were huge.  In spite of the cooler temperatures here, the flowers do great.  Maybe it is because of the cooler temperatures.

We stayed in the Mile Zero Bed and Breakfast.

This tree grows in lots of people's yards.  It has these beautiful red berrie clumps in it. 

This is the view coming out of the museum.

And this is the museum which at one time was the Skagway College.

You still get the impression you are driving a modern day vehicle down the streets of a century old town.


All of the streets are lined with wooden boardwalks.

The store fronts are well painted and taken care of.

I read that a ship left Skagway for Seattle.  There were some on board with $5000 in gold boullion.   Many had less.  And 4 passengers were leaving port with over $150,000 worth of gold.  The ship estimated they were sailing with around $12 million in gold.

This contraption went in front of the trains to clear the tracks of snow drifts.  It could handle anything up to 10 feet deep.

The mountain peaks jut up from sea level at a steep angle and are very impressive.