Dyea ... Start of the Chilkoot Trail!

We spent half the day at the beginning of the gold rush ... Dyea!!  Here's what it looked like in 1896 ... tons of supplies carried from the ships, over a mile from out on the dock at the top left.  This turned into a big mud flat, not allowing the ships to get any closer.  Before the dock was built, men and animals hauled their supplies through the muck and mud to the town of Dyea before heading up the Chilkoot.

Here's the same scene today.  The only remnants left are some of the dock pillars.  It's still pretty marshy, allowing for the mosquito nursery to come to life due to the warm weather.

You can barely see on the middle left of this photo, a small building in front of the large one.  This is the A. M. Gregg Real Estate Office back when Dyea was alive with people.

This is all that is left of the town.  None of the trees were here when the town was, so it's hard to imagine what it looked like.  But this false front still stands, with a little help.

In this picture is a large warehouse, marked in red.

Here it is today.  After everyone left and it became a ghost town, people came and either hauled the buildings off, or took the wood for other buildings, or the fireplace.  This one was used as a barn by a local farmer until it too hit the ground.

This is what's left of a rowboat, maybe 18 feet long.  

Along the way in the marsh, Patty spied these beautiful chocolate lilys.  I spied LOTS of mosquito bites.

The iris were just beginning to bloom in the warm summer sun ... actually it was about 80 degrees!!!

Here are the shells from Long Bay!!!  

And the piece of Bark Canada.  Funny, it's the only thing that fits in this small bay on my rig!!!!

After another great lunch of halibut Fish n Chips, we watched two ferries come in to Skagway from Juneau and Haines.  There was a really close call when one ferry almost ran over a small fishing boat that got in the way ... and I can't believe how many cars and RV's came out of that ferry!!!

Tomorrow we head to Whitehorse ... that is if Dan's mail comes in!!