Whitehorse Friday: Last night Kaff discovered that we could do the White Pass Train trip from Whitehorse. Which was one she wanted to do when we were in Skagway but by the time we get back to Skagway the train would have stopped running for the season. So she was up early and down to the office to try and get onto their office, but as they were on Alaskan time they were an hour behind. So we got ready and went back again at 0815 and thankfully there was a bloke from Calgary there who was waiting to catch the bus, so the Office man called again and managed to get us on the bus with about 3 minutes to spare.
What a trip it was . We travelled by bus to an old rail town called Carcross. This Railway along Whites Pass was built to replace the Chilkoot Trail which was the track all those Gold miners took when they struck gold in the Klondike in the late 1890's.   The trail is still used today by hikers and they can walk halfway or whatever and catch the train the rest of the way. We of course took the train the whole way. The scenery was just stunning. We stood outside the carriage and took photos after photo and we now have the difficulty of trying to choose which photo to save.
The train took about 2 hours I think and arrived in Skagway just after 1200. Kaff & I were picked out by the US Customs officer as we were the only ones who didn't have a visa..Everyone else got to go and have lunch in Skagway with their 2 hour break, but not us. The Big burly bloke took our passports and called us to follow him into his office at the station where we had to fill out our forms..then he said he would have to take us someplace else we couldn't understand ..so like illegal immigrants we had to get into the back of his car ..all the time him with a serious face and not talking just giving us direction..and off we drove..and we drove and we drove. He took us up to the highway customs office about 10klm out of town. Kaff was trying to make conversation in the car and he was doing his best to just give short answers all the time I was trying to signal Kaff to just shut -up ! Anyway we got marched into their office and had our photo taken, then the fingerprint check and then paid him $6 each and he gave us our green card. Once we had that sorted he took us back into town..we were killing ourselves laughing as the guy was so damn serious..He made us feel like a Mexican !
Anyway we were supposed to meet Mike from the train at the Northern Lights Restaurant but as we were held up he had thought we had been detained. So he gave up and had his lunch, we had lost an hour so we quickly had our lunch.
The town was full of tourists as there were 4 cruise ships in dock for the day. Amazing, those ships are massive. The town is still like an old Western town with Boardwalks for footpaths etc . We took a few pictures and then it was time to head back to the bus. We are coming back to Skagway on our trip home so we didn't worry about missing some time there.
The road trip back to Whitehorse via Carcross for an icecream stop took about 90 minutes. We had to go through Canadian customs again but it was made easy by them just coming onto the bus to collect our paperwork.
We met a family on the bus who had 3 young kids who had just spent 4 days walking the trail..these kids were awesome, they had also walked 200 klm across England this year over 14 days..It certainly made me feel fat and unfit that's for sure..lol
Tomorrow is sleep in day then taking a walk around town, refuelling and gassing before heading North on Sunday.