When we woke up this morning, we heard the patter of little rain drops on the tent. Every day so far, we have encountered some sort of precipitation but thankfully it wasn't raining too hard. We gathered our stuff up and threw it into the car then carefully wrapped up the wet parts of the tent. On the road and heading south, we stopped off in Whitehorse for more Tim Horton's and to fill up on gas before getting on the South Klondike.
Since we didn't have too far to go today, I had looked up several geocaches for us to grab and we made quite a few of them on the way back to Alaska. The most important one was the single cache available in British Columbia near the US/Canadian border. It was up a steep and snowy embankment and we weren't sure it would be accessible yet as no one had found it this year so far. As we climbed up, we had to cross some snow and then I saw a rock that looked like it had recently emerged from snow melt and the cache was there. At the higher elevations in the mountain passes, there is still a whole lot of snow.
All along this road we kept seeing these green Jeeps heading north and wondered what they were. As it turns out, tourists rent them in Skagway to drive up to Carcross in the Yukon while on a daily excursion from the multiple cruise ships that dock here. In Carcross, we saw what is dubbed as the "world's smallest desert" but it's really just some sand dunes created by glacial deposits that blow into the area. In the town, we learned about the White Pass and Yukon Route train that runs up from Skagway all the way to Whitehorse and follows the route people took during the Klondike gold rush in 1898. It too is apparently a big tourist attraction.
As we got into Skagway, we were horrified by the number of people. Neither of us had any idea that it is a huge cruise ship destination on the Inside Passage route. We could barely drive around for all the people darting out into the streets. While having dinner at the stupendous Stowaway Cafe, the first place I've found on the trip to cook halibut correctly, we asked our waitress if the cruise ship traffic was normal and she said they get up to six ships in at a time. I read later on that the town gets 800,000 tourists every year. This evening, there were only two ships still in port. We are resting up in the historic Sgt. Preston's Lodge and enjoying our private bathroom.
Kookatsoon Lake
Emerald Lake. It's green because of the light reflecting off a substance called marl.
Carcross Desert
Yukon Lupine
Raven totem in Carcross
Some neat old cabin in Carcross
We were in British Columbia all of maybe 45 minutes.
Beautiful BC mountains and snow
Looking towards the US border from the BC geocache spot
Skagway cliffs—it's a tradition for ships to paint the cliffs with their name and date the first time they ever come to this port.