Skagway/Haines Alaska

After leaving Atlin BC we detoured southwest along the highway loop leading through Skagway and Haines Alaska.This route was both a pleasant surprise and a big disappointment. The surprise was how beautiful the route was, possibly the best scenery of the entire trip so far. The disappointment was Skagway and how much it had changed from our previous visit in 1980.  There were many fabulous sights along the way, especially this grizzly and her two cubs. I couldn't quite get the cubs in the picture because they were down the embankment, out of view and there was no way I was going to get any closer for the sake of a photo!

We travelled through Carcross, Yukon, a place loaded with historical significance, not expecting the town to have a beach like this....

Or, a real (very small) desert....

To counter all that dryness, there was also colourful Emerald Lake....

We didn't take any pictures of the drive down to Skagway, it was so stunning photos just wouldn't do it justice. We arrived in Skagway with memories of a sleepy, interesting, little backwater where we had arrived on foot, by ferry, to hike the Chilkoot Trail in 1980. My, how it's changed. It's now home to a display of mass tourism at its very worst. Each day, it's announced on the radio how many cruise ships and people will be in port for the day. The day we were there, it was four ships and almost 10,000 people! The passengers swarmed the town, most of the historical flavour of which has been wiped out by the arrival of jewelry shops. There must have been at least twenty, even a Cartier outlet. The passengers were pounding the pavement up and down, up and down, all doing that annoyingly slow 'shopping shuffle'. The ones that weren't shopping were partaking of various activities like sealife viewing on large, black RIBs where not much wildlife could have been seen as the boats were doing high-speed doughnuts in the harbour. There were groups of four helicopters at a time taking off to shuttle people to see the glacier. The White Pass and Yukon narrow-gauge railway, which is a legitimate, historical artifact, now runs right down onto the cruise ship dock, so, they can load people on more efficiently in only a few steps right off the boats. Watching all this manic activity was tiring and we were glad to be leaving town. Next day would bring five ships with even more people to do it all over again.

To get to Haines from Skagway, a 45 minute ferry ride is necessary. We didn't have a reservation, so had to go on a standby basis. It was touch-and-go, but, they squeezed us on and we were grateful as it would have been a long road trip retracing our steps back. Haines was much quieter than Skagway and seemed more like a 'real' community instead of existing solely for tourist consumption. The road north from Haines travels through Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park, a Unesco World Heritage site. It was spectacular and a very different landscape from what we've seen so far. This is a photo of the Alpine meadow at Haines Summit.