Monday, June 30, 2008

Skagway, The end of the journey!

Well, here we are on our last night in Alaska. We arrived in Skagway yesterday about 1:00 pm and will be pulling out of here about 7:00 in the morning and will be headed home in earnest. The photo you are looking at is of two cruise ships docked in Skagway.
Let's get up to date on our travels. We pulled out of Dawson City about 7:00 am on Saturday. It was a nice, but not spectacular, drive to Carmacks. We spent the night in a campground next to the Yukon River.
Sunday we left about 7:00 am again and kept on a southerly route towards Skagway. The further south we got, we began to see more of the mountain ranges. It had rained all night on Saturday night and was still drizzling when we got on the road. We drove into the sunlight about 10:00 am. We reached White Horse and refueled at a bargain price of $1.62 per litre (over $6.00 per gallon). The drive from the Canadian border into Skagway is a long grade downhill for miles.
Our campground is in town and not much to look at; but is convenient for everything going on around us. We went on a last minute Alaska shopping spree in the afternoon; buying up lots of t-shirts, sweat shirts, caps and other souvenirs. This morning we hiked to a point and a bay nearby; about 3.5 miles round trip. Rosie is very happy, Sammy is tired and I barely survived.
At 1:00 pm today we joined the organized walking tour of Skagway led by a young lady with the Forest Service. We learned about the rowdy history of Skagway in the late 1800's at the time of the gold rush in Dawson City; and went into some old buildings that have been reconstructed with some of the original furnishings.

It was steak and salmon night for dinner, usually a Sunday meal, but we are off our schedule just a wee bit. In the morning, we pull up the long hill back into Canada and head for Watson Lake. We have cut one day out of our return trip and will be going back through Spokane and Salmon, ID insteaed of the longer route we originally planned. We are kind of anxious to get back to our home (and a king size bed). The camper is getting smaller every day (or so it seems). We will be updating the blog in Canada as often as we can get an internet connection that is strong enough.

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