We awoke to our last day in Skagway to find four cruise ships in port and the streets already crowded! With this many people walking around more pedestrians are in the streets than on the sidewalks and driving is a nightmare. 
After moving the motorhome over to the Alaska Marine Highway ferry dock we left town to visit the historic site of Dyea, the first community created by gold rush prospectors 9 miles up Lynn Canal and at the base of the Chilkoot Trail, a First nations trail over the Coastal Range into the Yukon. 
Canada required each prospector to bring with him supplies to last a year which required each miner to get one ton of material over the mountains by backpack, mule, or commercial means. This meant a lot of material built up in Dyea and neighboring Skagway. Warehouses, hotels, restaurants, and other businesses created boom towns in 1897-98. When the White Pass & Yukon RR was completed at Skagway Dyea was abandoned and most building torn down for their lumber. Today a few foundations and rotted timbers remain as well as the Chilkoot Trail, a favorite of hikers and backpackers. 
We returned to Skagway to get in line for loading on the MVS Columbia, one of the larger ferries in the Alaska Marine Highway fleet that was bound for Bellingham, WA.
The first stop was a short 50 minutes down Lynn Canal at the sleepy little fishing town of Haines, a`favorite stop of most RVers in Alaska. The ferry was delayed as one of the cruise ships departed ahead of us and we left an hour late. 
The cruise down the canal is a scenic one but it cannot match the view we have at Ocenside RV Park in Haines.
We are parked on the beach and facing the water looking across the canal as the large cruise ships sail past on the way down to Juneau and points south. 
We walked next door to the Lighthouse restaurant after getting set up and enjoyed a wonderful meal of halibut and salmon with a great view of the water. We returned to join other RVers watching the remaining cruise ships sail past.
The campground is having a live crab feed tomorrow night that we will be here for so it should be a great stay. We will spend the day visiting a couple of local museums and Haines has an Bald Eagle Preserve with over 3000 eagles in the area.
