Day 8 – The Last Frontier

The dramatic train ride ended in Skagway, Alaska. This was the land starting point for the Klondike gold rush.

But it had inhabitants long before.

The area was originally inhabited by the Tlingit, and its name derives from the Tlingit word skagua, meaning “place where the north wind blows.” Skagway was founded in the 1890s as the gateway to the Yukon and Klondike goldfields, and it was incorporated as a city in 1900.

Broadway is the main street, and when the economic driving force departs daily, aka cruise ship tourists, the streets roll up.

Our arrival almost correspondenced to their departure, overlapping by about 30 mins. The brewery, which was our first stop (we heard it was closing soon) had pretty much cleared out by the time we finished supper and a tasty beer.

We then meandered over to our historic inn and got settled. Back packs off, we went out checking out all the old and new look old buildings. We looked in shop windows, read plaques, and felt like we actually saw the town.

Which was a good thing as it didn’t feel like the same place in the morning. We lingered over breakfast as we were chatting with a couple from the train ride who stayed at the same inn.  When we ventured out, the streets were starting to fill up quickly. The first stop, the quilt store, wasn’t very busy. Other than picking up a fridge magnet, we weren’t good for the local economy. 

Instead, we hit the visitor century to confirm distances and set out on a hike. We went up to the Lower Dewey Lake and part way up to the falls. There were a LOT of people on the lower levels of the hike, but we found some peaceful, quiet patches farther up.

We then retraced our steps and high tailed it through town so we could make it to the good rush cemetery. Where we wandered around and read the little info there was on the headstones.

We caught the shuttle back to town to ensure we weren’t late for our bus departure. We had time to buy a couple of cookies for the bus trip back to Canada.

Land of the Midnight Sun – day 8

Which, talking about the environmental impact of tourism, felt awful. There were only 4 of us returning to Carcross on a great big bus. Apparently, it was very full on the way out, but still, it felt wrong. The plus side is that we basically had a private tour guide.

The highway follows the same valley as the train for a while and then veers into a different one. It was quite spectacular as well. We learned about silver mining, saw where the lakes merged from the two different gold rush trails and an Indigenous canoe moving down a lake along the top side.

Bernie