Sunday, June 4, 2006   Today found us traveling to Skagway, Alaska.  If you like to shop in small shops with tons of other people this is the place for you.  There were 3 cruise ships in port so that is where all the people came from  The only thing I bought was postcards.  I did walk downtown three times.  Our RV Park was right at the port where we could watch the fishing boats and the cruise ships come and go.  There was a steam engine tourist train that ran close by that drove Lucas crazy each and everytime it blew its whistle.  We were hungry for salmon and saw a restaurant listed in a booklet that advertised a salmon bake.  It was listed as being in Liarsville just a couple miles out of town.  We had a heck of a time finding it but find it we did.  When we found the restaurant they said the tour/dinner was over for the day.  That shocked us because it never mentioned that it was a tour.  In order to eat, we had to buy a tour ticket and come back the next day.  I guess we know why they call it Liarsville…they lied that it was a regular restaurant.  We opted not to come back the next day.  We stopped at a Gold Dredge on the way back to town.  Another thing, where you had to book a tour.  Opted out of that one too.  Back to town and down to the dock and check out the ferries.  We decided to take the ferry from Skagway to Haines instead of driving.  Haines is over 500 miles away by land but only 15 miles by sea.  We booked passage on the Alaska Marine Highway System for Monday evening. We called Shelly collect from a pay phone at the ferry station to check in and let her know what our plans were.  Sunday night I made spaghetti for dinner and we watched Cinderella Man on DVD.  Luckily, I had bought a few DVDs over the last few months that we never watched.  There was no cell phone, no cable TV, no local TV station, no radio! 

Monday, June 5, 2006    We left the RV Park around 10:30 and drove the RV and car the 2 blocks to the ferry dock.  We parked our vehicles in the pre-assigned spaces and walked to downtown.  Three cruise ships had come in early in the morning so we knew it would be packed in town.  Most of the time we walked in the street but we did walk on the wooden sidewalks that add to the charm of the town.  We went in and out of stores looking at t-shirts, mugs and jewelry but never bought anything.  We continued our walk down to the post office where I mailed postcards to the children.  We decided to go out for lunch at The Red Onion Saloon.  On our way to the restaurant, we stopped and looked at more jewelry.  I found a beautiful emerald and diamond ring and Skip found me some diamond earrings.  We opted to forgo the ring ($1,090) and earrings ($6,200)…that was 70% off!!!  That’s lots of gas and grocery money.  We stopped at the restaurant and only had to wait 15 minutes for a table.  The Red Onion Saloon was built in 1897 and opened in 1898 as a bordello.  There waitress’ were dressed as saloon girls and a man played the piano for entertainment.  For $5 you took take a tour of the upstairs which was the old bordello.  Neither one of us took the tour.  Skip walked down to the Skagway Elks Lodge and I went back to the RV.  Skip bought a silver commemorative coin from the Elks that he had seen the day before.  They began loading the ship around 4:15 but we didn’t go on until 4:45.  The trip took about 1 hour.  We sat in the forward lounge where I took a picture of Skagway from sea.  As luck would have it, it began to rain.  It was a driving rain that hit the front windows so we couldn’t see.  Eventually, we moved over to the side aisle and were able to see out the windows.  At one point we saw big horn sheep on the side of the hill.  It took about half an hour to exit the ship.  We drove 4 miles to Haines and went to a new RV park where we found the prices to be way too high…$35 plus $5 for internet plus $3 if you used your space heater or air conditioner.  We left and drove to the Elks lodge where we paid $18 which includes Cable TV…Seattle stations.  One place we want to see is the Bald Eagle preserve and of course, Skip wants to go fishing.