Sunday, June 29^th, 2008

 

We awoke to frozen toes but tires that are still full of air!  We promised the kids we would stop somewhere down the road for breakfast, and hit the road.   We did devotions on Proverbs 13, and prayed for a great day of travel, and that God would bless all our church family this morning as they gathered to worship.

 

 10 miles from where we camped we saw a grizzly right out on the road; Deaune took some good pics, but was a little concerned he had been so close to where we had camped…

 

The road was greatly improved, and we made good time to Haines Junction.  We stopped in at the Village Bakery for a $30 breakfast of cinnamon rolls – very pricy, but their sign said “get your buns in here!!” so we had to stop.  We all looked like we had been, in cowboy lingo, “rode hard and put up wet” – no showers for a couple of days can do that.

 

The Kluane Ice Fields were pretty cool, but not as impressive as the ones near Jasper, early on in our trip.  At mile marker 931 we saw bear #2 of the day, a big grizzly that was in a hurry to get in the woods.  This was near Takhini.  Mt. Logan is the 2^nd highest mountain in North America, and we viewed it as well.

 

We were praising God as we pulled into Whitehorse, and made a beeline for the Wal-Mart.  We bought a gallon of milk for $5.83, gas for $4.33 a gallon, and decided the cheese was out of our price range - $8 for 8 ounces.  We were able to get the tire on the Suburban repaired, and went to check out the “fish ladder”.  The Yukon River is dammed at this town, and in order for the salmon to make their way upstream past the dam; they have installed a wooden fish ladder that bypasses the dam for the salmon to take – sort of a detour!

 

Lunch was at the city park where the S.S. Klondike is on display – a sternwheeler that ran the Yukon for many years.  Built in 1929, ran aground in 1936; rebuilt and operated until 1955.

 

We jumped back in the Suburban and made our last leg of our journey to Skagway.  This was a beautiful stretch of highway heading south, called the South Klondike Highway.  We ran alongside the White Pass and Yukon Railway all that time, and passed some beautiful lakes.  During this stretch of less than 100 miles we went from Yukon to British Columbia to United States!

 

This portion of our drive has to rank as some of the most beautiful scenery.  Emerald Lake, Carcross Desert (worlds smallest dune area), Chilkoot Pass, Summit Lake, Bernard Lake, and Tormented Valley, a “moonscape of stunted trees and small lakes” – very cool!

 

The descent into Skagway was impressive, dropping thousands of feet over the course of 11.5 miles with an 11% grade.

 

Great rejoicing!  We entered Skagway around 5:30 and camped at Pullen Creek Campground - $42 and you still have to pay for showers!!  We did some laundry, had a supper of hamburgers and fried potatoes, and looked around town a little.

 

We stopped at the Marine Highway office to check on our tickets, only to learn they wanted to charge us another $480 bucks!  When we had made the reservation over the phone, the lady has said we could detach the popup camper from the Suburban and it would save us quite a bit – the folks at Skagway said this couldn’t be done.  We will take it up with a manager tomorrow…

 

We had only been in bed for 30 minutes when someone went tearing thru the campground…twice!  They stopped just across from us, and Deaune opened the camper door and stared them down; that must have done the trick, since they peeled out and didn’t come back!  I (Tim) had been on the receiving end of this look, and believe me, it is effective!