We’re in Skagway, Alaska, today and took a tour into the Yukon. We booked our tour with Thomas Pickerel from Skagway Yukon Custom Van Tours, so there were only four of us instead of a busload of our close personal friends. Tom was a great guide – he’s lived in the area for 40 years or so, so he was a fount of information and knew quite a few of the people we met along the way.
We didn’t see Sergeant Preston; in fact, we didn’t see any Mounties at all. We did see interesting and beautiful sights, though.
Devil’s Club can be very painful to encounter; it’s also the basis of various healing salves. On the way out of Skagway The border is here at the summit. US Customs is 8 miles south and Canadian Customs is 8 miles north. The weather got better the farther we went into Canada.Our first stop in Canada was the Yukon Suspension Bridge; it’s actually in British Columbia. This is Jacqueline, the owner of Yukon Rustic Jewelry, and the only resident in this part of British Columbia. She set up her shop at the BC/Yukon border. We stopped in Carcross,YT, for lunch, shopping, ice cream, and good internet connectivity. Our final stop in Canada was at Emerald Lake, just north of Carcross. Light reflecting from the limestone deposits on the lake bottom are the source of the green color. Our final stop before returning to Skagway was this waterfall on the US side of the summit.
We returned to Skagway and asked Thomas to drop us in town so we could explore more before retiring to the ship.
Our guide claimed this is the most-photographed building in Skagway. I’m willing to believe him. We walked back to the ship after doing a bit of shopping in town; I also looked for good Internet connectivity with no success.
We’re back on the ship now; their Internet connectivity is non-existent but our friend is getting LTE from the land and I’m leeching from his connection. I’m hoping the ship’s connection will improve when we sail away, but I don’t want to bet on it.
Tomorrow, we go to Icy Strait Point; connectivity is not supposed to be good there either, but hope springs eternal!
We took the White Pass Railway tour in Skagway the first time we visited.