Skagway, Alaska - June 12th to 13th, 2022
Skagway is a big tourist trap. It is a stop for most of the Alaska cruise ships. However, it still has a lot of charm along with a lot of history. We normally don’t like crowded tourist traps, but Skagway was the exception.
Sunday we crossed into Alaska! Our drive was from Tagish, Yukon to Skagway, Alaska. It poured down rain most of the day. As with most of our driving days recently, we knew the drive was going to be scenic. We were concerned that the rain might limit our visibility and we wouldn’t be able to see most of the beauty. Fortunately, that was not the case. Despite all the clouds and rain, we could see quite a bit. We’re sure it would be even more spectacular on a clear, sunny day, but we’ll take what we can get.
Our first stop was at the Carcross Desert. Even though we live in the same state as the Great Sand Dunes National Park, which are sand dunes in the middle of a mountain range, it still seems odd to us to come across sand dunes in the middle of nowhere. They seem so out of place, especially in the cold rain. We still associated sand dunes with a hot desert.
Next we drove alongside a series of lakes, with hazy mountain peaks among the clouds. We had to stop and let a black bear cross the road in front of us. He did not seem be in a hurry to get out of our way. As we got closer to White Pass Summit, the terrain turned to rocky alpine tundra, with lots of melting snow and waterfalls. Since the temperatures were close to freezing most of the way to Skagway, we expected the rain to turn into snow or sleet, but it never did.
The border between the United States and Canada is at White Pass Summit. However, the Canadian customs building is seven miles north of the border and the U.S. Customs building is 12 miles south of the border. We wonder if anyone has ever gotten “stuck” between the two checkpoints, where neither country will let them cross for some reason. Hopefully, the customs agents are not that heartless and they have some options, because that would be a harsh climate to be left in.
Since we gained an hour by crossing into the Alaska time zone, we arrived in Skagway before lunch time. We picked out a place to have lunch, Peppers Street Fusion. However, it was just a little after 11 am and the place didn’t open until noon. In the meantime, we walked around town for an hour, then headed back to the restaurant. Well, it was actually more of a food truck, in an old bus. This confused us because Google Maps claimed they had dine-in service. The friendly staff informed us that the Klondike Brewing Company across the street would allow us to bring our food inside the brewery. Keith didn’t mind. It was a nice excuse to order a beer with lunch. It was a nice arrangement since the brewery did not serve food.
For lunch, we both ordered the barbacoa bowl with lots of toppings. Due to a desire to clean out our fridge before crossing the border, we had eaten a lot of fat and sugar with hardly any fruits or vegetables the past couple of days. All the of the veggies with our lunch tasted great, with pickled onions, corn salsa, avocados, black beans, lettuce, and tomatoes. Delicious! Keith ordered the Klondike Original, which is an alt-lager. He thoroughly enjoyed his noon refreshment.
After lunch, we checked into the campground, Pullen Creek RV Park. The campground is run by the city of Skagway. It is conveniently located downtown, near the boat docks and train depot. Everything is within easy walking distance. As an added bonus, the campground itself is not bad for a downtown park. It is not a parking lot, unless you are a large rig that has to park in the neighboring parking lot. Most of the sites are spaced with grass in between the sites. Each site has both electric and water hookups. There is also a dump station along with flush toilets and showers. Not bad.
In the afternoon, we toured the town. We started off at the visitor center for the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Site. They had a wonderful short film about the Klondike Gold Rush and the history of the surrounding area. It was a great introduction which gave meaning to a lot of the historical buildings in town, the White Pass & Yukon Route railroad, and the role the White Pass Trail had with both the local tribes and the gold rush.
For the rest of the afternoon, we wandered around town, checking out the other historical buildings. The town of Skagway sprung up as a result of the Klondike Gold Rush and was a pretty wild place, with brothels, cribs where women also sold their services, and saloons. The railway was built to replace the White Pass Trail, which took its toll of many prospectors and many more horses.
Besides the historical buildings, there are lots of shops, bars, and restaurants in town. For all the cruise ship passengers, there are plenty of souvenir shops and fine jewelry stores. Not really our cup of tea, but they must bring in the money, or there wouldn’t be so many of them.
We ate out again for dinner. We didn’t have any groceries and didn’t want to buy a lot, especially fruits and vegetables, since we would be crossing back into Canada in four days. We both had a craving for pizza, so we tried the Northern Lights Pizzaria. It is both an Italian and Mexican restaurant, but, since we were in the mood for pizza, that’s what we had. We split a 14 inch with pepperoni and fresh tomatoes on one half and sausage with red bell peppers on the other half. It satisfied our craving, but we could not finish it. We took two pieces back to the van with us. The leftovers will make a nice lunch.
Our White Pass Summit train reservation was for 9 am Monday morning. It was cold and raining, but the train cars are enclosed. Visibility wasn’t too bad until we got near the summit. The train runs on the opposite side of the valley from the Klondike Highway, the one we drove into Skagway on. So much of the view was very similar. On the train, an announcer gave a running commentary on the history of the area and the viewpoints coming up so you could be ready with your camera. Was it worth the $134 per person? We’re glad we went, despite the poor visibility. However, if you’re on a tight budget, you can just drive the highway for the scenery and spend more time in the visitor center, historic buildings, and museums in Skagway for the history.
Ann noticed what looked like red dust on top of some of the snow near the White Pass summit. She asked one of the guides on the train if they knew what caused the red color. They called it watermelon algae. It is also called watermelon snow. The algae seems to love freezing temperatures and is found in alpine and coastal polar regions around the world.
The slightly less than three hour train ride goes through a couple of tunnels and over a bridge. Most of the view from the train is on the west side of the train. However, it doesn’t matter which side of the train you sit on because the train turns around at the summit, so you either get the nicer view on the way up or on the way down from the summit. The view to the east is also nice. Even though the mountain slopes up on that side, you get a close up view of the rocks, flowers, and waterfalls along the way.
When we returned to Skagway, it was time for lunch. During the day, the town is packed full of people from the cruise ships. Every day, there are four cruise ships docked in the port and the town is flooded with potentially 10,000 people from those ships. We walked past the Bonanza Bar & Grill which had a line of people outside the door waiting to get in and headed to the Skagway Brewing Company. The Skagway Brewing Company was not much better in terms of crowds. We put our name in and only had to wait about ten minutes for a table. The restaurant was up on the second floor. We’re not sure how many hundreds of people they can seat at a time. It was loud, crowded and busy. The staff looked overworked as they tried to keep up.
We were looking for something light because we overate the day before. Initially Ann was just going to have a salad, but we were cold and a hot sandwich sounded better. We both had Philly cheesesteak sandwiches. Keith had his with fries and Ann had hers with a side salad. The Philly had cheese sauce in addition to melted cheese. Ann normally is not a big fan of cheese sauce, but she enjoyed the food all the same. It was hot, which was the important thing at the time.
Keith tried the spruce tip beer. The train commentator gave us the history on spruce tip beer. Many of the gold rush prospectors did not have any vitamin C in their diet and were suffering from scurvy. The local natives showed the prospectors how to brew tea from spruce tips, which are loaded with vitamin C. The prospectors took the concept even further and made beer from the spruce tips. Skagway Brewing Company’s spruce tip beer is a blonde ale. Keith really enjoyed it.
After lunch, we picked up dessert at a small, cute bakery called Lucy’s Bakery. Keith picked out shortbread cookies with lime icing filling between the two cookies. Ann tried the cinnamon roll, as that seems to be the most popular dessert on our trip so far. We enjoyed our treats, but Ann feels the cinnamon buns from Tetsa River Lodge are still the winner so far (Alcan: Tetsa River, British Columbia - June 4th to 5th, 2022)
After picking up a couple of grocery items at the Alaska Commercial Company - Fairway Market, we returned to our Red Tail Lodge (our van) to warm up. The forecast predicted that the rain would take a break around 4 and 5 pm, so we headed out on a hike around 3:30 pm. The Lower Dewey Lake trailhead was just across the road from the campground. It was lightly raining, but we were hoping the forecast was correct and the rain would stop soon.
Unfortunately, it never did stop raining, but we enjoyed our hike anyway. The hike starts out with a steep incline up to the lake for about half a mile. Even though it was raining, Ann took her raincoat off and just let her shirt get wet. Her shirt was going to get wet either way, from the rain with the rain coat off or from sweat with the rain coat on. At least with the rain coat off, she was a comfortable temperature.
At the lake, the trail loops around the Lower Dewey Lake for a couple of miles. Ann put her rain coat back on after she cooled down from the steep climb. There were not a lot of views of the lake on the loop, the trail stayed mostly in the woods. Right where we reached the lake, we were surprised to see a small boat dock with a few boats. Someone had to haul all that up those switchbacks. We’re glad it wasn’t us. We took the loop in the clockwise direction. At the north end of the long lake, there was a small maze of streams feeding the lake which the trail crossed on boardwalks.
We were again surprised to see several points along the trail with picnic tables, fire rings, and fire buckets. Hopefully they used horses or mules to haul all those things up to the lake. At the south end of the lake, the view opened up. Being exposed to the sun (but not today), there were a lot of wildflowers. Beautiful.
By the time we returned to our Red Tail Lodge, we had covered 3.8 miles with an elevation gain of 899 feet in two hours and twenty minutes. We counted this as hike 18 of our 52 Hike Challenge for 2022. After changing out of our wet clothing, we headed into town for dinner.
By dinner time, the town gets pretty deserted. Most of the people have returned to their cruise ships. We walked by the Bonanza Bar & Grill. There were no lines this time of day, but nothing on their menu sounded good to us. We were looking for a place with nice salads or something light to eat. We decided to go into the Red Onion Saloon, the one with the brothel tours. After we sat down, the waitress informed us that they were out of all of their soup and salads, so we got right back up and left.
We headed back to the Northern Lights Pizzeria, where we had dinner the night before. The restaurant is less touristy than the other places and has a rather large menu. The sign says it serves Italian and Mexican food, but we ended up choosing the gyro with a side Greek salad. Our meals were very tasty and satisfying.
Before going to bed, we enjoyed our internet connection by catching up on some of the YouTube channels we follow. When all of the cruise ships are docked during the day, our cell service becomes extremely slow. We were trying to use our Verizon Jetpack in Skagway since it doesn’t work in Canada and we’ve been using up our AT&T hotspot time on our phones. However, the cruise ships seemed to impact the Verizon signal more than AT&T, so we found ourselves using AT&T during the day. After dinner, most of the cruise ships had left port and our cell service improved again.
Tuesday was moving day again. This time, instead of driving, we were taking the ferry from Skagway to Haines. We didn’t need to check in for the ferry until 12:15 pm, so we had a very relaxing morning. After dumping our gray tanks and checking out of the campground, we parked in the day parking lot and walked around Skagway one last time. A new group of passengers from another set of cruise ships packed the streets. It was Flag Day and there was a ceremony near the NPS visitor’s center. A couple of performers at the Days of ’98 Show theater were sitting in the upstairs windows singing and trying to attract customers for their two daily shows.
We ended up at the Glacial Coffeehouse for a mid-morning treat. Keith ordered the Americano and a cherry Danish, while Ann had a chai latte. She never really drank chai latte’s before this trip. Now it seems to be a regular drink for her. It gives her something to order when Keith wants to stop for coffee. Ann walked next door to the Klondike Doughboy and picked up an Alaska fry bread. It was hot and yummy. What’s not to like? Fresh, hot fried dough with sugar and cinnamon. How can you go wrong? Keith was regretting his choice of the Danish.
So despite the crowds from all the cruise ships, we really enjoyed our time in Skagway. Keith wants to come back. Perhaps we’ll even take a cruise next time.
Check out our related video: Skagway, Alaska
(Ann)