Skagway

So, we made it to Alaska!

Katherine is holding a note that Julie wrote us with directions to her house from the border. It was about 30 minutes from that sign to Julie's house in Skagway.

Julie left the note for us under a pile of rocks just next to one of the legs of the sign. We felt pretty cool that we were the only tourists who had a note left for them at the border.

The customs booth is a few miles down from the border.

We got there earlier than expected and Julie was still at work. After saying a quick hello, we explored the town and took some much needed showers. I think I must have been done with cameras from all the pictures I took on the trip so I took a little break. The next day we reaped the benefits of knowing tour guides in Alaska.

Julie had to work the next day, but her and her friend Heidi set up a few tours for us. The first was a dog sledding tour. It started out with a video that was really interesting. After the video, Katherine and I heard the guy behind us say, "I hate dogs!" We turned around and it was Jared - Julie's brother. It was hilarious. He came with us on the rest of the tour.

One of the tour guides was a guy named Matt who'd been in several Iditerod races. We got to see some of his dog team and they even ran them around this dirt track. This is the beginning of the run.

I couldn't really see them in the middle so I just got the end here. The dogs were a lot smaller than I thought they'd be. They're bred for speed.
After seeing the dog teams we got to see some puppies. They were so cute. Julie and Heidi named this little black and white puppy Chicken. When I say "named" I mean that's what they call them.

I'm holding one of the 3 light colored puppies. Julie and Heidi call all 3 of them Mango. After that tour we did a gold panning tour, but my battery died before we got to that one. Julie got off soon after that and came with us on our next tour of the day.

This was the coolest tour ever! We went to a glass blowing tour at a place called Jewell Gardens.The lady who did the glass blowing, Amy, was super nice. She did some demonstrations and then we each got to make our own glass ball. Here I'm doing the blowing while she gets ready to remove it from the rod.

Here are Julie and Amy with Julie's finished ball.

I had to get a picture of us with our safety goggles on.

We took a look around the gardens and they were pretty impressive. They did some fun artistic things like these flower "beds."

After the tour, we went at had dinner at the restaurant Heidi manages. It was really good.

Katherine wasn't feeling well so she stayed home, but Julie and I went to a place called the point. These flowers were all over, but I finally got in a picture with the on the way.

It was a really cool walk to get out to the point.

This part looked like the ending part of the first Lord of the Rings movie.

This is the view from the point. It was so pretty. We watched the cruise ships leave.

We were excited to see that there were some whales in the inlet and we had a good time watching them. You can see one of their backs in this picture.

Julie got this one of me as we were leaving the inlet. It was such a pretty night.
I snapped this quick one as we were leaving as well. If you look closely, you can see a cruise ship against the small end of the mountain on the right.

Julie took this picture of me that night - Thursday. At this point, I'd had my braids in since Sunday night and I was ready for them to come out.

I think I had 24 braids. They made my hair really big when I finally got them all out!