On the road to Skagway...

Yukon Territory somewhere along the Alaska Hwy.

On Wednesday, we set out for another full day of driving, this time north and then west and then south. (We have been buying gasoline where we can find it because of the remoteness of the region and the RV’s tendency to drink it. We’ve paid between $5.02 and $5.77 a gallon while in Canada so far. Grr.) Hwy 37 dead ends into the Alaska Highway, where we turned westward. The Alaska Highway, originally called the ALCAN Highway, was built by the U.S. Army in 1942 to help protect Alaska from invasion during World War II.

The 'highway' is a two-lane road not really designed for actual traffic. There were far too many times that we had to slow to a crawl because of long stretches of loose gravel for this to be called a ‘highway’. There were also more than a fair share of potholes…big ones, like DC potholes. One bright spot was Teslin, a little town along enormous Teslin Lake. When we stopped in for more overpriced gas, the young lady behind the counter handed me a card good for 18 cents off each gallon (4 cents per liter) for this and future visits. Nice. Thank you! Another bright spot is that we saw 7 more bears - two brown ones and five black ones, how fun!

Bove Island

Tagish Bridge

We continued on until we turned south onto Hwy 8 where the scenery was spectacular. We crossed through Tagish, a tiny town of a few dozen homes and some businesses all taking advantage of the recreation of Tagish Lake on which they are perched. After a bit, we headed south on Hwy 2 from Carcross, BC through Fraser, BC and on to Skagway, Alaska. Near Fraser we saw tiny Bove Island on the Windy Arm of Tagish Lake, covered in trees under a beautiful blue sky. After that, the landscape began to change rather dramatically.

Hwy 2 to Skagway

Between Carcross, BC and Skagway, AK we took in the most beautiful scenery either of us has ever laid eyes on without exception. We descended 3000 feet in elevation during the last 12 miles or so before Skagway and past an alien landscape of magnificent and surreal rock formations, covered in trees and snow and surrounded by alpine streams and rivers. It looked like a cross between the arctic tundra and the moon with pools of water so clear you could drown in their reflections, except for the few frozen over with ice, and overshadowed by towering snow-capped peaks. It was breathtaking. Sadly, the camera didn't capture nearly as much as we saw.

As we crossed through the border into Alaska, we again endured a slew of questions from the customs guy (now a US customs guy), without a smile but with less verve than when we originally crossed into Canada. As we descended into Skagway, the frozen streams and icy mountains gave way to more and more evergreen trees and a deep valley down to the Scaguay River. We could see the narrow gauge WP&YR Railroad snaking its way on the opposite side of the river from us, barely clinging to the mountainside.

View of Skagway from Hwy 2

To quote an article written in the Skagway News on December 31, 1897 during the Klondike Gold Rush,

“The town is situated in as charming a valley as the eye of man ever rested upon. The valley is narrow, being most precipitous, as well as most picturesque. Halfway up the mountains on the east, just above the town, is a mountain lake, from which pours a great volume of water, leaping down the mountainside in cascades and waterfalls…On either hand, as you look northward up the valley, tall mountain peaks are seen, their serrated tops standing out in bold relief. On the west eternal winter is personified in a vast glacier that juts out from the mountain side, as if ready to leap below. West of the town, hugging the foothills, runs the Skaguay River…”

Couldn’t have worded it better myself.

Little boat dock in Skagway Marina

We set up camp at the Pullen Creek RV Park, situated a block from the downtown as well as next to the end of the train tracks for the WhitePass and Yukon Route railroad and just down from the wharf where the giant cruise ships pull in to drop their tourists. The park is basic but extremely convenient and within view of the snow-capped mountains that overlook the town on the other side of the harbor. We settled in for a little while, then walked down to the dock to see the two huge boats and the swarms of people returning to them.

Broadway Street, Skagway, Alaska

We walked back into the downtown area and peeked in the windows of the shops lining Broadway Street from 2nd to 8th Streets. Jewelry shops are in a clear and decisive majority here, obviously pandering to travelers from the cruise ships…Princess, Disney, Norwegian, and so on.

Many of the other shops offer a wide range of Alaskan themed tchotchkes and gifts…everything from keychains, t-shirts and postcards to ulus, mukluks and totems. Oddly, a large variety of gifts from Russia are also on display…matryushka dolls, hand-carved Christmas figurines, and black lacquer boxes. We wandered around taking pictures of the false-fronted buildings, many dating from between 1898 and 1901, during the Klondike Gold Rush.

The streets were emptied of the throngs of cruise ship tourists and a calm quiet settled over the town. We ate dinner at the Skagway Brewing Company, a local hangout on Broadway offering a tasty meal and an even tastier porter.

We walked back through the downtown and remarked that at 9pm, the sun still had not set, in fact, it had barely reached the tops of the mountains around the town. At 11pm, we tried to go to sleep in daylight so bright it looked like early dusk for hours. What a beautiful little town...like a milkshake after a month of starving.