Skagway

Thursday, June 17 -- We hit the Al-Can Highway about 8:15 this morning.  There is very little traffic on this highway, we might meet a vehicle, usually an RV, every 3-4 miles, with an occasional semi thrown in.  There are lots of lakes, rivers, and creeks, and some have some interesting names.  We crossed "Screw Creek" this morning, which Joe thought was noteworthy.  We've seen very little road kill in Canada, but this morning we came upon 3 ravens eating 3 dead ravens in the road.  Must be a story about the three dead ones, maybe they were all deaf or something.  Since I posted the wrong bridge picture for Hazelton, I have another bridge picture for Eric.  This is the Nisutlin Bay Bridge, longest water span on the Alaska Highway at 1,917 feet.  This bay  flows into Teslin Lake.

We drove for many miles along beautiful Telsin Lake, which is 86 miles long.  This lake averages 2 miles across and has an average depth of 194 feet.   It was laying like glass, Joe thought someone should be waterskiing on it.  You can see the reflection of the clouds and mountains in the water.

Then we made a "pie" stop for Dave at the Yukon Motel & Lakeshore RV Park.  It was over-advertised regarding the pie -- they only had 2 pieces, and one of them was burnt, which Dave had and got for free.  But it also had a Wildlife Gallery, which was very nicely done.  Cody, the picture of the polar bear is just for you -- in case Grandpa doesn't get to see a real one (or get a picture of a real one).

I really like the stuff bear on the porch.  I told Joe I really wanted it, but he didn't think it would fit on our dash.  Then, inside, I found a moose I really liked too, but Joe gave me the same answer.

At this point, the decison was made about Skagway.  Joe and I ventured off on our own Excellent Adventure to Skagway, and Dave and Collins and the M&M girls headed to Whitehorse, in the hope that we will rejoin them tomorrow night at Haines Junction.  So we split off at Jakes Corner (yes, Canada has a Jakes Corner too).

We finally crossed a river with a marina and boats, and we saw one boat heading out, so somebody does occasionally use these rivers.  The road was good, with just an occasional gravel patch, and the scenery got better and better.

We had lunch at a beutiful rest area at Bove Island in Tagish Lake.  This picture is taken from the table inside the RV (Brenda, see the tea glass).

The scenery got even better from then one.  Beautiful mountains, the lake, and then river beside us for miles, so left-over structures from old gold-mining sites.

The mountains in front of us were striped with snow -- Joe called them "zebra mountains."

Then we came into an area called "tormented valley," a rocky desolate "moonscape" of stunted trees and small lakes.  Our pictures don't do this justice, it was very pretty and very interesting.  Joe thought it looked like volcano rock, or the renmants of a glacier hundreds of years ago.  The Milepost states that "the subalpine landscape represents a transition zone between the treed lower elevations and the true alpine above treeline.  The small, twisted alpine firs are shaped by a combination of heavy snow burying their lower branches and icy winds sculpting their upper branches."There were numerous waterfalls on the other side of the highway, pouring into creeks that ran into these small lakes.

Then we got to Skagway, a very small, touristy town.  There were 3 cruise ships in port.

 
We hit some of the gift shops and drove out to an old Gold Rush Cemetery.  Then we found another out-of-town road that went back to some historic site, so we took that one.  The road looked like something out of Deliverance, and there was an old one-lane wooden bridge, that I didn't think we should cross.  Joe said, "get over it, Wilma, the water isn't that deep."  That wasn't very reassuring.  There was a sign that pointed us down a side road to some tidal flats, so we thought we should check that out for John and Bridgette.

However, Joe redeemed himself by finding me a BEAR!!!  Our first sighting of a grizzly, and we got to watch him for probably 15 minutes.  He first crossed the road in front of us and went into some evergreen trees, but then we saw him come out of those trees, and then he got into a little pond and was eating the roots along the bank, or he was taking a bath.  It was extremely cool.  He finished his time in the water then started grazing toward some more trees.  There was a dog sled camp at the end of this road, and the dogs must have gotten a whiff of the bear because they ALL started barking, which spooked the bear.  We got to see him take off running across this little road (I screwed up the camera and didn't get any pictures of that).  But it was all very exciting.

Finally we headed back to go down to the ferry to book our reservation to Haines tomorrow, and then we had dinner (halibut again).  We leave at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow, have to be at the dock at 5:50 a.m.  Fortunately, today we are in Alaska timezone, so we gained an hour, which we will lose when we cross back into the Yukon tomorrow. But it never really gets dark here, so we are having a little trouble getting to sleep.  We spent some time today trying to darken the bedroom by hanging some dark towels over the windows.  We'll see if that helps tonight.