Today we rode by bus to Fairbanks. Our 1st stop is Delta Station state park. It houses six,100 year old buildings that were built after the gold rush started. There is a fully furnished road house, weigh station for wagons to determine toll fare for ferry, telegraph office, officer quarters, tool/barn, and outhouse. From the property we got a great view of the Alaskan pipeline, walking right up to it. From the park, we continued to Fairbanks, through the town of ...

Still in Yukon territory, we got up and ate in our room-breakfast bars and juice. We met our tour group and went to the Klondike Spirit paddle wheeler, for a trip down the YUKON river. A costumed guide filled us in on the history of the stern wheeler and paddle wheeler in the Dawson gold mining era. Did you know that a stern wheeler had 1 paddle in the rear and a paddle wheeler has a paddle wheel on each side? We passed a First Nations village, a cemetery for aba...

This morning we boarded the Yukon Whitepass Railroad at Skagway to Fraser. It was built in 1898 to transport gold and minors deep into the Yukon for the gold rush. The train traveled up the mountain on the edge of the mountain. A fascinating trip with beautiful views-scary as you look over deep gorges and cross over the Skagway river and go through 2 tunnels. The engineering was amazing also, considering it was built at the turn of the century. The train use to c...

Our second and last port is Skagway at the end of the Inside passage. It has a population of 900, and has 3 streets, each 8 blocks long. It has a history with the Klondike gold rush. We eat at 6:15 am, then gather the rest of our belongings and go to the theater to meet our tour guide and hear a program on Skagway and the gold rush. The US park service has a park here and a ranger gives us the history of the town beginning with the Gold Rush of 1896. After the...

Before going to bed last night we were warned to set our clocks back 1 hour. We are back in the USA. We are now 3 hours behind Houston. We have entered into US waters. We got an extra hour of sleep! After another huge breakfast, I went to the Tech workshop on the Cloud and learned some new things about sharing that will come in handy. Gary walked the deck. After lunch we got to our first port-Juneau. It is the capital of Alaska and has 30,000 people. You can only...