We took the trip of a lifetime and it wasn't what we expected.  We were looking for a way to get to Skagway because moorage in Skagway is hard to come by (they won't take reservations so you have to take your  chances) and it's 100 miles up and 100 miles back.  There's no anchorage around Skagway so the only alternative is to go to Haines and take our chances there.  Then we could take a ferry from Haines to Skagway.  We thought about taking the ferry up there but that would mean getting a hotel room, which are also impossible to come by.  Since we have Molly with us, that becomes even more difficult.  So we finally decided to fly up to Skagway, take the Chilkoot Trail Train and then fly back.  We did this in one day.  It happened to be an absolutely beautiful day and, I think, even the pilots were excited.  So we flew up to Skagway on a Cessna 10 seater by way of the icefields.  Oh my God!!  We thought the train ride would be pretty, but the icefields were amazing!

The last couple of pictures are Mendenhall Glacier which feeds into Mendenhall Lake in Juneau.  The pilot flew us over the Juneau icefield and right down Mendenhall Glacier and then landed in Juneau.  We took so many pictures but I can only include a few of them here.

The train ride was up the Chilkoot trail which is the route the gold diggers took during the gold rush of 1898.  Skagway is a very historical town, and fun to walk through.  We had plenty of time after the train ride and before the flight back to Juneau to walk all of Skagway.  The guidebook said only 1 cruise ship/day is allowed in Skagway, but that's changed because there were 3!  Lots of people and given that it was the nicest day of the summer this year, everyone was out in full force.  One of those days that was not planned but turned out to be a great day.

I forgot to tell this story.  Jon befriended one of the fishermen in Hoonah and he gave us some halibut that he had just caught.  Not knowing how to cook halibut, I quickly did some research.  We couldn't decided what to do so we seasoned each piece differently and had a taste test.  My sister was still with us for this part so we had a ball.  The fisherman said that he always pan fries his.  We grilled ours and then gave him some.  He thought ours was pretty good.  It was hard for us to decide which one was the best.  Pretty good dinner. . . for free!  

You probably won't hear from us for a couple of weeks.  Jon is leaving tomorrow to return home for a few days to take care of some business.  I'll stay here in Juneau just doing mundane chores like provisioning and laundry.  Once he returns on Sunday, we will start to head west our Icy Straits and Cross Sound and then south to Sitka.  My guess is we won't have any internet until we get to Sitka.  Talk to you in a couple of weeks.