Why blog?

Summer evening at the Skagway Inn

It's really not that odd a question. Blog to record self-absorbed musings? Blog to communicate with more than one person at a time? Blog because of the searing compulsion that one lives to write? (We know that's not my answer...obviously.) Blog because everyone's doing it? (Everyone isn't.)

Over half the season is over and my blog posts are way down from last year...as are the number of "followers" of my blog...whatever that even means! This year is so very different from last year on several levels. There is much I can write on being a driver/guide and maybe that will come a little later in this post. But the primary difference on a personal level is number of hours worked and amount of fatigue at the end of the day.

Other drivers are working every bit as much as I am and they still manage to go out and do things to have fun. Me? I don't know if my quota of fun being much less this year is due to my age, being so overweight or simply my temperament. When you work 10-13 hour days, at least 5 days a week, there just doesn't seem to be that much energy left for fun. Wake-up is often 4:45 a.m. to have an hour for morning routine and to give me an hour for a pre-trip of the coach. Return to our room is often 5-7 p.m. Makes for very long days.

Not much to say about June except the joy in watching the season change from spring to summer. That means watching the snow melt and the flowers bloom. Also, animal sightings still continue to be a delight. Sadly, we both had bad colds in June....lasting about 3 weeks for each of us.

We took an overnight out of town to Whitehorse, the capitol of the Yukon Territory about 110 miles north of Skagway. While there we went to a couple of very interesting museums....one a history museum and the other one on Beringia: the land bridge between Asia and North America. Most surprising thing learned about that is that it wasn't just some 15 mile bridge over the Bering Strait. It stretched almost a thousand miles north/south. Also, the ice ages didn't uniformly just flow south. There were patches of non-glaciation, one of which accounts for gold being found in the Klondike. Ok...so that may be more interesting on my tours than in a blog.

Mike with Canadian flag in his hat at the parade.

A public art project

But as a surprise, we happened to be in Whitehorse on our getaway on Canada Day, July 1! Parade, tents in the park, free cake, exhibits, and fair food! The highlight for me was being invited to sew a button on a piece of artwork representing the Yukon flag and then signing the guest book with my name, where we're from and what we love about the Yukon. The flag will be displayed around Canada and eventually auctioned off.

FerrieK and Shari with Klondike Goldrush TB
(I keep forgetting how short I am until I see photos.)

Other highlights of being there for Canada Day was geocaching. Last year, we found all the caches within easy reach of Skagway. Up in beautiful Miles Canyon, we found a travel bag that had as its mission to visit the Yukon and Alaska and return home to the Netherlands. We picked it up in the Yukon with the intention of bringing it back to Skagway. At our next cache, located at the SS Klondike...a steam boat used during the gold rush days, we met another cacher. Now this does happen from time to time that you run into another cacher at a cache. What was pretty exciting is that he is from the Netherlands! Mike ran back to the car and fetched the TB and this is me handing it over to our new caching friend to help the TB complete its mission. It is now back in the Netherlands.

Another interesting moment was watching a sea bird screeching and dive bombing an eagle's nest. We had heard that the mama eagle had been killed and that the male was guarding the nest. There is at least one eaglet in that nest. I tried to upload the video of the attack, but it just gave me an error message after twenty minutes! Grrrrrrr!

Seth feeding Shane...Winners!

The day after we got back from Whitehorse, Mike had to leave on another run. So sadly, he missed the July 4th festivities here in town. The company bbq was a blast again and the weather was dryer if not warmer than last year. There was the pie-eating contest, a silly game, volleyball, sausages on the grill and too much drinking. Fireworks began at 11:30 p.m. and it was never totally dark throughout the show. This year, the group I was with went to the end of the Ore Dock where we had a much better view. Fireworks were shot off from a boat moving around in the harbor and also off of the Railroad Dock to the east. A very good show...far better than you would expect from a small town. But WINDY!!!! Yes, we felt cinders on our faces and were freezing. An hour after I'd huddled in bed with pajamas and a heavy robe under the covers, I got up and took a hot shower just to get warm!

Taylor in white in the middle of the photo during the egg toss.

Shari, Our Egg and Amanda

The next day included the dunk tank, egg toss, basketball competition, duck race and many other festivities. Amanda and I entered as a team and we did set the bar quite low...we just didn't want to drop the egg on the first toss. We made it toss 4 and felt very smug about it. Taylor and Alisha made it to the point where you didn't toss across the street from boardwalk to boardwalk but went even further to tossing it down the street. They did wonderfully! And Chris Rowland and his new bride, Brianna made it to 3rd place! Bravo!

Teri at the mining ruins at Lake Tagish

Since then, I have been on an exploring trip up to Carcross with Brenda and Teri. We poked around some mining ruins on the shore of Lake Tagish. And we walked around the cemetery in Carcross, locating the graves of a few of the people involved in the discovery of gold at Rabbit Creek in 1896: Kate Carmack, Skookum Jim and Dawson Charlie (not to be confused with Tagish Charlie...but that's more tour info type detail). We were very respectful and didn't disturb the spirit houses, take photos or any other shenanigans.

Other than that, it has been working and not working. My driving is improving, well...except for that little incident of parking too close to the boardwalk, turning my wheel to leave and having it pop up a board. Two new boards sit in front of the Days of '98 Show at the Eagles Hall. I've left my mark on Skagway. And my tours are smoother. It was a mark of some sort the day I realized that I had more information in my head than I had time to relate on a tour to the Yukon...our longest tour.

Knock on wood, I've been very lucky and not had any really bad, in-your-face angry types. I've had people with walkers and those who use canes. I've had people who are deaf and people who are blind. I've had children and very old people. I've had fun people, quiet people, rowdy people, sleeping people and people who read books during the tour. I've even had a great-great-grandson of a stampeder who hiked the Chilkoot Trail. He was gracious enough to tell his ancestor's story to the rest of the passengers.

Yesterday I had a passenger who had a seizure. Sadly, they had just had a city tour of Skagway after disembarking from their 3 day cruise. They were about to start a 10 day trip up to Dawson, out to Denali and down to Anchorage. After getting her and her husband to the local clinic for care, she was then med-evac'ed to Juneau. Last I heard, they had gotten the seizure under control. She was going to stay in a Juneau hospital overnight before she and her husband returned home. Very sad for them, scary for the other passengers and a day that ended for me by enjoying some lovely red wine on the patio at the Skagway Inn.

Winter 1898 photo of the Golden Staircase

Two days ago, Mike and another driver, Brian, headed out on the Chilkoot Trail. It is one of the two main trails used during the Klondike God Rush and includes the Golden Staircase. This section is an elevation change of 3500 ft. in a mile and a half and 1500 of that in a quarter of a mile. Happily, their first two days which included summiting were stunningly beautiful sunny days. They are expected back tomorrow afternoon. It's a total of 35 miles and people fly in from all over the world to hike this historical trail. Along the way are artifacts discarded by the stampeders. Of course, at this point in the year, the Golden Staircase is not steps carved from the ice. It is, instead, a massive boulder field. Brian and Mike both expect to be hurting puppies by the time they complete the trail. Mike has our camera, so I can't post their start-off photo.

My "Chilkoot Trail" hike

One of the attractions we bring our passengers to is called Caribou Crossing. They have a set where you can put yourself next to man-sized silhouettes of those early stampeders. That'll have to be my extent of the Chilkoot Trail for this year.

Being in Alaska is, as it was last year, everlastingly scenic. It is blissfully cool while the rest of the country is experiencing record highs and drought conditions in many areas. Animal sightings are always wonderful: grizzly bear, black bear, bald eagle, moose (once), porcupine, Arctic red fox and marten (once). The flowers continue to delight me, even if I don't know most of the names. What I'm missing this year is the energy and time to get to know the other employees and people in town. But the stay up here has been a financially good one. I believe we are also spending less money than we did last year. The salmon are beginning their run and people have already gone bear watching over in Dyea. I still try to learn something new every day for my tours. It is guaranteed that someone on most of my tours will ask a new question that I don't yet have the answer.

Today's research yielded the following: 3-5 people die in Skagway every year, not including the occasional cruise ship passenger (no passengers yet this year, 2 last year). The nurse practitioner or police chief have the authority to pronounce the death. There are two drawers at the clinic for bodies. Bodies are flown to Juneau for autopsy, cremation or embalming. Almost no one has a wake or funeral home hours since there is no funeral home in Skagway. There is one active cemetery in Skagway and two that are closed.

The exodus is starting in just two days. The first employee is leaving having completed his contract. He is leaving to teach English in China through a faith-based organization. Two weeks later, some of the BYU students will be leaving to go back to school. And so it begins.

Finally, I'll close with just a couple more photos...just because I like them.

Steam train coming into Fraser, BC through the fog.

Skagway River looking south, 2 miles from the harbor