Skagway and Robert Service

This is the land of Robert Service, a poet that I never particularly liked before coming to Alaska. But his poetry fits this land, expecially "The Spell of the Yukon":

It's a great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,
It's the forests where silence has lease'
It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It's the stillness that fills me with peace.

It just keeps getting better and better. The drive from Whitehorse to Skagway is beyond superlatives. The mountains are closer and higher and steeper, the lakes are like fjords, the rocks are glacier-scoured to the bare bones of the earth where little life has taken hold yet. It was a drive of only 110 miles, but through breathtaking valleys with long narrow lakes and finally down the side of a deep, narrow defile where you couldn't see the bottom and the river from the road, although you could here it way down there.



This first picture is Lake Tutshi, I think. We drove beside it for miles.




Just beyond it was an area of glacier-scoured rock, granite it looked like, and Lake Bennett (third photo) lay in the rocky potholes that the glacier had left behind.

Starting down the side of the gorge towards Skagway, we could see the railway on the other side of the gorge.

Skagway is a delightful old town at the head of a real fjord, with towering mountains all around. It is a cruise ship stop for a few months in the summer, but that is apparently not enough to support much of an economy. There are only 800 or so residents and the town is not all tarted up as a resort - not condos or expensive homes or resort hotels or lodges. Just the small downtown with its old buildings painted up and selling souvenirs, furs, and a lot of jewelry. The port and railway depot are the focal point of the town. We walked around and looked in the windows and stopped for a cinnamon bun (Linda) and chocolate croissant (Diane).

Tomorrow we'll visit Dyea and the Klondyke Goldrush National Historical Park a short drive into the next arm of Taiya Inlet. The Chilkoot Trail, the route to the gold fields during the Klondyke gold rush starts here. For the young and/or ambitious, you can hike the Chilkoot Trail. We don't plan to, except for maybe a few hundred yards.