SKAGWAY - JUNE 30

We arrived in Skagway the morning of June 30 and took a walk into town.  Skagway is a small town of about one thousand and the streets and buildings are immaculately kept.  I saw a park ranger walking along and he saw some debris on the street which he promptly picked up.

One of the main streets in Skagway.

This building looked like it was made of 'log sticks'.

Not sure what the year represents but I don't think it was the year the building was built.

The second main street in Skagway.

In the afternoon, we took a helicopter tour to land on top of Meade Glacier. It was a very windy day which caused me a bit of angst.  These are the pictures from that excursion.

All decked out in our glacier gear - life jackets and special boots over our shoes.

This is the helicopter we took.  It's just returning from a previous excursion.  There were five of us plus the pilot in the helicopter.  We were seated to maximize weight distribution and my friend and I were squished (and I mean squished) into the front seat.

Glacier, silt runoff and what could be termed a 'silt lake' taken from inside the helicopter.  The helicopter in front of us was the first of four to take off.  We were the second group.

A view of the bay from inside the helicopter.

We were surprised by the many rocks and silt on one half of the glacier.  It reminded us of the moon.  Picture left and right sides; one side is basically rocks, moss and silt and the other is the more pristine glacier.

The water flowing from the glacier is very pure and is safe to drink.  The pilot and this young lad were the only ones to drink the water this way, which the pilot said is THE way to drink the water.  The rest of us used our hands to scoop the water up.

Moss is the only thing growing on the glacier.

The more pristine half of the glacier is in the immediate background.  We couldn't walk on it because it is very jagged.

These very deep, large crevices caused by glacier melt are interspersed on the surface.  Our pilot basically told us that if we fell in, we weren't coming out so we had to be extremely careful where we stepped.  Happy to report that we all made it back safely!

The two halves of the glacier with the mountains on the pristine side.

This was an awesome excursion, despite the fact that the return trip left me a tad green.