July 2nd - 11th Day Alaska Trip

We met Leroy's son Billy for breakfast at the hotel, then made plans to ride the historic White Pass & Yukon Route Train out of Skagway for roughly a 56 mile roundtrip. This scenic narrow gauge rail line began as the "Railroad to Hell" in 1897 for carrying miners and supplies to the Klondike gold fields 550 miles away. Of the 100,000 men and women headed north, only 30,000 reached the gold fields of the Klondike. 4000 prospectors actually found the gold but only a few hundred became rich. Nevertheless, it became the largest gold strike in history - in 1910, the gold recovered was valued at over 40 million dollars. Leroy's son Billy, his wife Janie, and his grandson's wife's parents Jeff and Kathleen accompanied us on the train ride. It was a pleasant day off the bikes and the weather was beautiful. We window shopped at bit more in Skagway, ate an early dinner, then back to the hotel. We catch the ferry tomorrow morning at 6am over to Haines, then back into Canada on the Alaska Highway before heading up to Fairbanks, Alaska.