Summer Recap pt 4

The next day brought us steaming into Skagway, Alaska, famous starting point in the Yukon Gold Rush back in the late 1800's.  The name of the town is derived from the local Native American tribe's word for howling winds, or something like that.  The "city" has a population of about 1500 at the height of the tourist season, mostly made up of seasonal workers looking to make very good money from the tourist industry for the few months out of the year where this is one.  Usually only 500 or so people live there year round, conquering the howling winds and snow.  There are four main streets and a lot of connecting avenues.  At one point this was the most lawless city in any US territorial holding, and had more whor- working girls than any other as well!  The Red Onion Saloon is a lasting monument to those days (http://www.redonion1898.com/).

Geographically, Skagway sits at the end of a large valley with heavily forested mountain walls surrounding the whole town.  The nearest neighboring city is Haines, AK, which is only 19 miles away by ferry- but over 300 miles away if you tried driving between the towns!  The terrain is that impassable- rugged!- isolated!  In fact, our tour guide (Terry) for the scenic trip to the US/Canada boarder informed us that if you wanted to drive from Skagway to say, Fresno, CA (where he was from), you'd have to drive over 900 miles in the wrong direction before hitting the first road letting you head south.  If you have car trouble in Skagway, the kind your can't handle on your own, you have to call a tow truck from Whitehorse, YT (Yukon Territory, Canada- over 100 miles away) to come get your car.  You'll pay $80/hour for them to tow you over to Whitehorse; God help you if they don't have the part you need!  Terry also made a comment about the food in the grocery store: since everything was shipped into Skagway, and spent weeks in cardboard boxes, everything tasted the same.  He bet our bus that if we could tell the difference between a Skagway apple, pear, and onion- blindfolded- he'd give us ten bucks!  Believe it or not, none of us took him up on the bet.

The landscape on the way to the boarder is stunning!  Since we were there in June, there was a lot of snow run-off, so everywhere you turned there was water falling down a mountain side in a thin, silver ribbons.  We learned that the gold miners used a trail across the valley from the highway to lug their gear to the boarder.  Many carried their gear on their backs, crawling on all fours at certain points.  As it turns out, there were two laws in Skagway at that time, the one I remember was: NO STEALING!  If you were caught stealing someone else's stuff, you were shot on site.  I forget what the other law was, but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with the whor- girls in town.  Some of the more wealthy prospectors used horses to haul their stuff up the trail.  When a horse died, it was left where it dropped or pushed off the trail, down into the valley.  Terry said that at one point, you could climb down to the valley floor rather easily by sliding down the horse carcass pile.  Imagine that smell...

We passed over a cantilever bridge on the way to the summit (http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/worlds-scariest-bridges/17) and got our picture taken if front of the Sawtooth Mountain range.  The landscape is more beautiful than anything I ever saw in Colorado, and believe me, that says a lot!  As it turns out, the nine miles between the US/Canadian border check-points is considered a no man's land, so technically you can cross over the border as much as you want.  However, the wind up there has been clocked at over 140MPH at times, especially in the winter, so no one is likely to do that.  Because of the inhospitable landscape at the border, each country keeps their check-point further down in the valleys on their own side.  But the view at the summit is expansive!  The Yukon looks so wide open from there.  We took all kinds of pictures, one even ended up on our Christmas card this year!

After the tour, we spent the rest of the day walking around Skagway.  It's a neat place, we'd love to go back.  Bevin and I love to walk through antique shops every chance we get; souvenir shops aren't much different, except I know that I don't feel the same strong compulsion to buy anything.  Don't think for a second though that taking your money isn't what just about every shop is there for!  Cheap gold, silver, precious stones all of which you can only get in Skagway for the low, low price of... 

We did buy a fantastic sculpture by one of the local artisans.  It's a bear carved from Alaskan spruce, with a fish in it's mouth.  Bevin took one look and asked if we could buy it.  I have to admit, when I saw the bear, I just wanted to pet him and say, "Good boy!"  The title of the piece is "Catch and release my ass!"  We ate a pizza at the local Italian/Mexican restaurant and true to what Terry told us about food prices, the cost of the pizza was waaay high!  Still, it was good pizza, tasty, no cardboard after taste either.  Also, we have visited the world's smallest Radio Shack/AT&T/video store, which happened to share space with the local outfitter shop.  I took in a couple of pints at the Skagway Brewing Co. bar, where their house specialty is brewed with Juniper buds.  The beer is an acquired taste, but it's also stout which made me happy!  As it turns out, the Juniper in the brew supplies you with 300 percent of your daily Vitamin C needs, so it's actually good for you. 

One last thing to mention before I stop writing for the evening:  there's an interesting tradition for all of the ships that pull into port in Skagway.  The first time a ship pulls into port, the crew paints their colors or ship's flag on the mountain side next to the port.  This is apparently a long standing tradition, some of the dates that I read went back to the 1930's!  And the airstrip in Skagway is one of the trickiest places to land a plane in the US, if not the world.  It's an awesome place!