We had a good service at church this morning.
Kelsey and Lydia came over for awhile this afternoon. Lydia and I had to take a ride around the property on the tractor.
Below is a photo the gift she gave us for Grandparents Day.
Thursday, the 11th we docked in Skagway at 6 AM. Kathy and I rode a tour bus over to the White Pass & Yukon Railroad. We rode the train about 70 miles, to Frasier, British Columbia. The railroad is a narrow gage railroad that was built in the late 1800's. They used the narrow gage so that they could make much sharper turns in the mountainous terrain. They built it in 26 months! That would be fantastic if they had built it over that terrain in a temperate climate. These guys were dealing with 50 below temperatures and sustained winds as high as 70 mph during the winter months. They used 450 tons of blasting powder during the construction. The original line was 110 miles long. It is an interesting story. You can read more about it at http://www.wpyr.com/history/
When we got off the train we boarded a bus again and continued on to Bennett Lake and then on in the Yukon Territory. We went about another 60 miles into the Yukon Territory. Before the railroad miners had to carry their goods to Bennett Lake from there the could travel by water.
At a couple of places along the trip we saw mountains that appeared to have holes through them.
This was the path of many of the miners who were rushing to the Klondike gold fields. After they got to Bennett Lake they still had 600 miles to go, but it was mostly via water. One interesting point was that the Mounties would not let miners into Canada unless they had at least a ton of supplies. That was supposed to be enough to keep them from freezing/starving. There were two routes from the Skagway area to Bennett Lake. One was very steep, many of us have seen old photos of the miners going up what looked like an incredibly long stairway. That route was to steep for pack horses. The miners had to carry their ton of goods, by making many trips. The other route was along the route where the railway was built. In just a couple of years over 3,000 horses died from being abused carrying goods up the trail. One of the areas along the railway is called Dead Horse Gulch because many dead horses were pushed off the trail at that point.
There was a very small "Mounties Museum" at the complex where we had lunch. One of the exhibits was the list of what each person had to carry with him to get into Canada.
The bus driver lined folks up, had them hand him their camera's and took their photos along at the sign at the entry into the Yukon Territory.
I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. May God bless you and yours.
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