We did an easy day trip from Whitehorse to Skagway over the White Pass. During the two years of the Klondike Gold Rush, one thousand would-be prospectors and various hangers-on arrived by steamship every week to Skagway. Two of three never made it over the pass with their ton of required supplies, faltering while ascending the eighteen thousand steps carved in the ice for the final summit climb. Today, eight to ten thousand tourists flood out of the cruise ships daily, with a different idea of what is worth freezing for. We checked out some of the National Park Service sites to get the 1890 perspective. And we took the short drive over to Dyea, which rivaled Skagway and is now a ghost town. Whitehorse is more of a commercial and regional government centre, however a nice relaxed vib. Cathy encountered a voracious giant beaver at the Yukon Beringia Interpretative Centre. The Fish Ladder allows chinook salmon to continue their 1000+mile journey from the Beaufort Sea to spawn in the upper streams that feed the Yukon River. We ate well at The Burnt Toast Cafe and The 506 All Day Grill.
Our two day drive to Anchorage was mostly on the Alaska Highway. Much is over perma- frost and you have seen nothing of rough roads until you rock & roll across these. The most freaky thing we saw was a motorhome that got rear ended by the jeep it was pulling when the trailer hitch failed on said roads. Most memorable where the fly-over by a snow goose, and of course the glaciers. Saddest was the receding faces of the glaciers and the sand storms from the winds over the exposed sediment. Most astonishing was a mint MG in the farthest west town in Canada.
