Thursday July 21

Garden City RV Park

Skagway,AK

9AM  53°F. Overcast 

9,360 miles since leaving NH 

Today we're  playing tourist.

This is Skagway actually this photo was taken last night. Today there are 5 cruise ships in Port and the boat people are everywhere 🙃.

While searching for parking we encountered a mom otter and 2 pups. Somehow mom ended up on one side of the street and the pups on the other. We pulled over to watch the saga as mom tried in vain to get back together with her pups. The pups stayed in the tall grass and hid barking constantly.  Mom tried several time but her timing wasn't good. She eventually seemed to give up. The pups started to head for the street but never got the courage to make the dash. We left to wander around town.

We decided to do a 3 hr train loop on the White Pass and Yukon Route.  The train follows the Trail of 98. This one of the main paths that the men took from the coast to the Klondike at Dawson City. 

while waiting for our departure we wandered around town dodging boat people.

For the winter snow removal they have a special snow thrower. 

You definitely don't want to play on the tracks.

The tracks are on the opposite side of the valley we drove down yesterday and goes along the actual trail they climbed. It's amazing the stamina those gold rushers had. The Canadian government required each person heading into the Klondike to have a full year of provisions to enter Canada. That was approximately 2,000 lbs of food, clothing and equipment. They estimate that on each trip a miner would carry 200 lbs. Requiring 10 trips up and down that grueling trail. Once they finally arrived in Whitehorse they still had to build boats or rafts to travel the Yukon River for 550 miles to Dawson City. (Re watch the movie "White Fang" the Hollywood version or if you read try Jack London's writings). I think I read the clef notes in high school.

Once we returned from our train ride we drove to the other Klondike trail which started a couple of bays to the north in Dyea. This trail was not did not have the backing of Jack London and is there not well known. It actually was a much harder trail and fewer gold rushers took this trail. But it had a river and rocks sooooo...

So for dinner as all good tourists we went to The Skagway Brewing Company. Our waitress was great and put up with us. We told her about the blog and asked how she would like to be referred to. "How about just the cute young waitress at the Skagway Brewing Company ". So there you go Elise! 😁