Skagway

Skagway is known as the headquarters of the gold rush. Therefore they have a really cool train track that goes into the mountains and around and into Canada. We, aka Aaron, Dad, Mom, Colby, and myself, got on the early train and got off at the first step and hiked up towards the Denver glacier with our guide, named Whitey (short for Whitey Mouse and not his actual name). Whitey had been in Skagway for 12 years, originally from Utah, and spent his first 7-8 months in Skagway living off of the land in the wilderness and studying ecology. So not only did he guide us up the mountain, but he also gave us an ecology lesson the whole time. He was a pretty cool guy and I'm pretty sure he thought we were rad too. I guess we aren't your typical "cruisers," who buy jewelry at every port and are kind of obese and lazy (very broad generalization - but kind of true on our cruise anyway). He said he took us further than he's ever taken any tour group, and we actually saw the glacier come out from behind the clouds (a rare occurrence). We hiked a good pace on the way up but then had to practically trail run the whole way back so we wouldn't miss the train.

 We didn't miss the train and grandpa was waiting for us there. We made it all the way up into Canada and even got our passports stamped. We were there for about 30 minutes and then we turned around and went back to the boat.