Vacation! Part...3?
Day 7 - Skagway.
Skagway was my favorite - a tiny town nestled in one of the more wild and remote-looking areas of southeastern Alaska. We learned that the local population consists of only a couple hundred year round residents, with passing cruise ships providing most of its income and economy. It’s got one gas station, one convenience store, a couple of restaurants, and something like 33 jewelry shops, only one local - the rest are owned by the cruiselines. (I never did figure out what the whole deal is with people going on cruises just to buy jewelry - and cruiseline jewelry, no less. So weird.) Back in the late 1800s, though, it was the largest city in Alaska, the hub of the gold rush with thousands of residents and a thousand additional passing prospectors. It got pretty exciting for a while as the city fell to utter lawlessness - apparently there were all manner of colorful characters running the place, like this one guy called Soapy Smith who gave money to widows and played benefactor to the needy while simultaneously operating a huge crime ring that ran the city. AND he headed his own spy network. Sounds like he was a real classy criminal. Oh, also according to one of our guides, there were eighty-something brothels in the town and only one church. Anyway, eventually the stream of gold prospectors dried up, the local economy collapsed, and the town dwindled to what it is today. I’m not sure if that’s happy or sad.
We disembarked fairly early in the morning and wandered the town for a while. It didn’t take long to get from one end to the other. There were interesting old advertisements painted directly on the cliff faces dating from the Gold Rush. There was also a portion of cliff where apparently every ship captain who docked there had also left their marks in paint, along with the names of their ships. (Somebody had also painted a Triforce. I wanted to get a picture for Laura, but never got around to it.) Jeremy and I ended up checking out the tiny convenience store, as well as the gas station, which boasted two pumps and also served as a laundromat. A young foreign couple in a very old and beat up camper had pulled up to one of the pumps. They were obviously vacationing using the Mom and Dad’s Honeymoon method - aka, drive until you break down - and it made me slightly nostalgic for simpler times. (Like back when I had the freedom to travel whenever I wanted, and didn’t have to document for the government every detail of my plans.)
Around ten we met up with our guide for the day. She drove us out of Skagway and up into the mountains via a rugged gravel road (it’s name was Raggadass Road, which cracked a lot of people up) to a town called Dyea (pronounced Dy-EE), population 6. I never did see the town, its residents, or any sign of civilization at all. Back in the day it was a sister city to Skagway, packed with gold rush opportunists, but when Skagway built the railroad apparently they gained the advantage of having both a better port and better land transportation. So everybody ditched poor Dyea. Skagway’s train was pretty nifty, though - they installed this whirling blade on the front of the engine that plowed through the mountains in the winter, chopping up all the hardened snowdrifts in its way. I thought it was pretty neat.
The road to Dyea was beautiful, and wound along the edge of a scenic bay surrounded in pine-clothed mountains. I really can’t imagine how amazing it would be to live in such a place. We saw bald eagles and seals, and further inside the bay a few sandbars covered in scrubby grasses rose to the surface, reminding me of some of our beloved Oregon beaches. Further in the woods we drove up and down a place called Bear Alley for a few moments, where our guide informed us there were so many bears on a daily basis that she wouldn’t even go running here; she’d had to shove bears out of the driveway with the bus before. Of particular interest was the cinnamon bear, an old ornery local who is a large black bear by breed but fortunately/unfortunately was born with the coloring of the much more dangerous brown bear. So he had scared the heck out of most of the farmhands for a while until they figured out he’s really a cowardly black bear by birth. Sadly, though, all of them must have been hunkered in their caves that morning, because we didn’t see a single furry hide.
Finally we arrived at the little farm where we were slated to go horseback riding - it was tiny, charming, and nestled all by itself with a couple of outbuildings deep in the woods. The outbuildings were the cabins where the seasonal workers stay - they told us they come equipped with only a fireplace and no electricity. Talk about Little House on the Prairie. The only power to be found was in the tiny kitchen they all shared. What an interesting life that would be. Our guide told us that she would miss the woodsy living when she went back home to San Francisco at the end of the season, but was really looking forward to sitting on a couch again. Oh, and also one of the riders had a huge fluffy black dog that was ridiculously cute and knew how to high-five.
The farmhands gave us a crash course on horseback riding, which I found very reminiscent of my crash (ha ha) course on piloting at IFS. (“Here’s how you fly a plane. Got it? Now get in that pilot’s seat and do it. What, you don’t feel ready? Well, I’ve lived a full life. I’m ready to die, so let’s go.” Not exaggerating here - that’s exactly how it was, and I’m still amazed to this day that nobody, including myself, died.) So I was a bit anxious about piloting a horse after having not touched one in 24 years. Also, there was this vivid memory of Age 5 Me falling head first over the edge of the saddle and my neighbor having to catch me by the pants to keep me from eating gravel, but then my pants slid off. That was embarrassing even at age 5.
Anyway, Jeremy was given a beautiful, muscular, tawny brown horse named Vick to ride. Vick was a rescue horse so he could be a bit skittish/ornery at times. Jeremy handled him impressively well, though, and he only bit the horse in front of him twice. My horse was a dark chocolate-colored beauty named Bullet. The reason he was named thus, our young guide with the crazy beard informed me, was because he’s so slow. Then Jeremy, myself, and a handful of other riders headed out into the woods, caravan style. Bullet tried to live up to the ironic connotations of his name once or twice, but he was pretty good about listening when I urged him to catch up to Vick’s behind, which kept emitting large and stinky piles of manure. I quickly discovered, however, his other significant quirk: Bullet hates mudpuddles. The first part of the path was flooded with them, and Bullet made it quite clear that he would rather scrape me off on a tree or low-hanging, eye-gouging branches than ford those murky depths. After several close encounters with ending up in them myself, I finally learned to remind him who was boss on the reins several moments before encountering the muddy areas. He didn’t like it, but sloshed through anyway.
At one point in the woods our guide (just as young and cheerful as the rest but, as I mentioned, sporting an impressive chest-length beard, who also hails from Fairbanks and travels the world and chops wood for money during the off season) pointed out a tiny raised grassy area in the middle of the thick woods we were currently traversing. He informed us that that had once been Main Street in the formerly thriving city of Dyea. Off to the left a slightly larger bump nudged through the moss, and we were told it had once been the courthouse. Pretty much the only thing that had survived from the once-bustling Dyea was the cemetery, I guess. And even a good portion of those graves were fakes from gold miners who, overwhelmed with debt, vanished after a major avalanche and then snuck back to erect their own tombstones so that the creditors would think they were dead.
Eventually we emerged from the woods, crossed a one lane bridge lined in fading wildflowers, walked through a wild Christmas tree patch, and came out into the beautiful view of bay and mountains once more. Here we let our horses drink from the creek and nibble a bit of grass. Bullet started getting ornery and kept trying to yank the reins out of my hands, but eventually we remade our peace with each other. Our guide told us stories about how the settlers had left most of their horses behind in this very area when the gold fever died out, and how they lived wild for almost another hundred years before the state finally came out to round them all up. His own horse, Johnny, had been born wild, which was pretty neat. We found an old dock in the middle of the Christmas tree patch, quite a good distance from the water, and our guide explained that it had been built back at the turn of the century along with everything else in the area, but that back then the glaciers were bigger so they compacted the earth to a lower sea level, but now that they were receding the earth was springing back up. Or something like that. So only a hundred years ago the whole area had been covered in water, and now there’s nothing to show for it but a lonesome, stranded dock. It was also interesting to see that the Christmas trees farthest away from the shoreline were tallest, while the ones closest were short little guys - a vivid illustration of how the water receded and the time it took to do so.
After we had thoroughly basked in the view, we headed back to the farm, where we all enjoyed hot cocoa, crackers, and local salmon. They drove us back to town with both Jeremy and I having had the most fun yet and determined to own horses one day. Or at least to ride them more often.
Back in town Jeremy and I shopped around a bit, picking up little gifts for the September birthday people (Laura and Eddie. I forgot about Aaron). I bought myself a wonderful fleece that was probably the best purchase I’ve made all year. We dawdled around for a while trying to decide what to do next - I still wanted to rent a car and drive to Yukon Territory, but it was three in the afternoon by then and sadly no longer feasible. We then considered taking the train on its last trip of the year up to White Pass, but it was spendy. So we reverted to our original plan and hiked the trail to Lower Dewey Lake. I would have loved to continue to Upper Dewey as well, but that would have been an all day venture. As it was, hiking a mountain in cold, clear air again revitalized me in a way I haven’t felt since…well, the last time I climbed a mountain. It was wonnnnnnderful. If I could hike mountains for a living, I would. There was one interesting portion where Jeremy and I accidentally got sidetracked on a game trail for quite some time, which quickly became extremely narrow and precarious. Around the time we found ourselves sliding down a sheer rock face with only a bent tree to hang on to, we decided we should probably turn around and find the real trail we had obviously missed. We did so and made it to the lake after a lovely climb through some darkish woods that probably has fairies and things living in it. It had lots of Super Mario mushrooms, anyway.
We finished the day around 6 or so and returned to the ship very happy. Actually, I was really happy and Jeremy was pretty grouchy because he’s convinced himself that he doesn’t like hiking. But the next day he admitted he was glad we had done it, so hopefully that’s a step in the right direction.
And that was Skagway, our favorite day (though all the others were still outstanding). Next time we’ll have to rent the car and take the train, since I’m still sad we missed out on that. The horseback riding was well worth it, though.
Alright, so I’ve got to relearn brevity, apparently, or I’m never going to finish writing about this stuff. I’ll try to wrap up the Alaska adventures in the next post, especially because I’ve got present-day stuff to talk about. My disclaimer for these self-absorbed talkative entries are that they’re more for myself many years down the road when I’m feeling nostalgic, and I in no way expect anybody to read and comment on it all. Probably I should have written that at the beginning. Meh.
Skagway was my favorite - a tiny town nestled in one of the more wild and remote-looking areas of southeastern Alaska. We learned that the local population consists of only a couple hundred year round residents, with passing cruise ships providing most of its income and economy. It’s got one gas station, one convenience store, a couple of restaurants, and something like 33 jewelry shops, only one local - the rest are owned by the cruiselines. (I never did figure out what the whole deal is with people going on cruises just to buy jewelry - and cruiseline jewelry, no less. So weird.) Back in the late 1800s, though, it was the largest city in Alaska, the hub of the gold rush with thousands of residents and a thousand additional passing prospectors. It got pretty exciting for a while as the city fell to utter lawlessness - apparently there were all manner of colorful characters running the place, like this one guy called Soapy Smith who gave money to widows and played benefactor to the needy while simultaneously operating a huge crime ring that ran the city. AND he headed his own spy network. Sounds like he was a real classy criminal. Oh, also according to one of our guides, there were eighty-something brothels in the town and only one church. Anyway, eventually the stream of gold prospectors dried up, the local economy collapsed, and the town dwindled to what it is today. I’m not sure if that’s happy or sad.
We disembarked fairly early in the morning and wandered the town for a while. It didn’t take long to get from one end to the other. There were interesting old advertisements painted directly on the cliff faces dating from the Gold Rush. There was also a portion of cliff where apparently every ship captain who docked there had also left their marks in paint, along with the names of their ships. (Somebody had also painted a Triforce. I wanted to get a picture for Laura, but never got around to it.) Jeremy and I ended up checking out the tiny convenience store, as well as the gas station, which boasted two pumps and also served as a laundromat. A young foreign couple in a very old and beat up camper had pulled up to one of the pumps. They were obviously vacationing using the Mom and Dad’s Honeymoon method - aka, drive until you break down - and it made me slightly nostalgic for simpler times. (Like back when I had the freedom to travel whenever I wanted, and didn’t have to document for the government every detail of my plans.)
Around ten we met up with our guide for the day. She drove us out of Skagway and up into the mountains via a rugged gravel road (it’s name was Raggadass Road, which cracked a lot of people up) to a town called Dyea (pronounced Dy-EE), population 6. I never did see the town, its residents, or any sign of civilization at all. Back in the day it was a sister city to Skagway, packed with gold rush opportunists, but when Skagway built the railroad apparently they gained the advantage of having both a better port and better land transportation. So everybody ditched poor Dyea. Skagway’s train was pretty nifty, though - they installed this whirling blade on the front of the engine that plowed through the mountains in the winter, chopping up all the hardened snowdrifts in its way. I thought it was pretty neat.
The road to Dyea was beautiful, and wound along the edge of a scenic bay surrounded in pine-clothed mountains. I really can’t imagine how amazing it would be to live in such a place. We saw bald eagles and seals, and further inside the bay a few sandbars covered in scrubby grasses rose to the surface, reminding me of some of our beloved Oregon beaches. Further in the woods we drove up and down a place called Bear Alley for a few moments, where our guide informed us there were so many bears on a daily basis that she wouldn’t even go running here; she’d had to shove bears out of the driveway with the bus before. Of particular interest was the cinnamon bear, an old ornery local who is a large black bear by breed but fortunately/unfortunately was born with the coloring of the much more dangerous brown bear. So he had scared the heck out of most of the farmhands for a while until they figured out he’s really a cowardly black bear by birth. Sadly, though, all of them must have been hunkered in their caves that morning, because we didn’t see a single furry hide.
Finally we arrived at the little farm where we were slated to go horseback riding - it was tiny, charming, and nestled all by itself with a couple of outbuildings deep in the woods. The outbuildings were the cabins where the seasonal workers stay - they told us they come equipped with only a fireplace and no electricity. Talk about Little House on the Prairie. The only power to be found was in the tiny kitchen they all shared. What an interesting life that would be. Our guide told us that she would miss the woodsy living when she went back home to San Francisco at the end of the season, but was really looking forward to sitting on a couch again. Oh, and also one of the riders had a huge fluffy black dog that was ridiculously cute and knew how to high-five.
The farmhands gave us a crash course on horseback riding, which I found very reminiscent of my crash (ha ha) course on piloting at IFS. (“Here’s how you fly a plane. Got it? Now get in that pilot’s seat and do it. What, you don’t feel ready? Well, I’ve lived a full life. I’m ready to die, so let’s go.” Not exaggerating here - that’s exactly how it was, and I’m still amazed to this day that nobody, including myself, died.) So I was a bit anxious about piloting a horse after having not touched one in 24 years. Also, there was this vivid memory of Age 5 Me falling head first over the edge of the saddle and my neighbor having to catch me by the pants to keep me from eating gravel, but then my pants slid off. That was embarrassing even at age 5.
Anyway, Jeremy was given a beautiful, muscular, tawny brown horse named Vick to ride. Vick was a rescue horse so he could be a bit skittish/ornery at times. Jeremy handled him impressively well, though, and he only bit the horse in front of him twice. My horse was a dark chocolate-colored beauty named Bullet. The reason he was named thus, our young guide with the crazy beard informed me, was because he’s so slow. Then Jeremy, myself, and a handful of other riders headed out into the woods, caravan style. Bullet tried to live up to the ironic connotations of his name once or twice, but he was pretty good about listening when I urged him to catch up to Vick’s behind, which kept emitting large and stinky piles of manure. I quickly discovered, however, his other significant quirk: Bullet hates mudpuddles. The first part of the path was flooded with them, and Bullet made it quite clear that he would rather scrape me off on a tree or low-hanging, eye-gouging branches than ford those murky depths. After several close encounters with ending up in them myself, I finally learned to remind him who was boss on the reins several moments before encountering the muddy areas. He didn’t like it, but sloshed through anyway.
At one point in the woods our guide (just as young and cheerful as the rest but, as I mentioned, sporting an impressive chest-length beard, who also hails from Fairbanks and travels the world and chops wood for money during the off season) pointed out a tiny raised grassy area in the middle of the thick woods we were currently traversing. He informed us that that had once been Main Street in the formerly thriving city of Dyea. Off to the left a slightly larger bump nudged through the moss, and we were told it had once been the courthouse. Pretty much the only thing that had survived from the once-bustling Dyea was the cemetery, I guess. And even a good portion of those graves were fakes from gold miners who, overwhelmed with debt, vanished after a major avalanche and then snuck back to erect their own tombstones so that the creditors would think they were dead.
Eventually we emerged from the woods, crossed a one lane bridge lined in fading wildflowers, walked through a wild Christmas tree patch, and came out into the beautiful view of bay and mountains once more. Here we let our horses drink from the creek and nibble a bit of grass. Bullet started getting ornery and kept trying to yank the reins out of my hands, but eventually we remade our peace with each other. Our guide told us stories about how the settlers had left most of their horses behind in this very area when the gold fever died out, and how they lived wild for almost another hundred years before the state finally came out to round them all up. His own horse, Johnny, had been born wild, which was pretty neat. We found an old dock in the middle of the Christmas tree patch, quite a good distance from the water, and our guide explained that it had been built back at the turn of the century along with everything else in the area, but that back then the glaciers were bigger so they compacted the earth to a lower sea level, but now that they were receding the earth was springing back up. Or something like that. So only a hundred years ago the whole area had been covered in water, and now there’s nothing to show for it but a lonesome, stranded dock. It was also interesting to see that the Christmas trees farthest away from the shoreline were tallest, while the ones closest were short little guys - a vivid illustration of how the water receded and the time it took to do so.
After we had thoroughly basked in the view, we headed back to the farm, where we all enjoyed hot cocoa, crackers, and local salmon. They drove us back to town with both Jeremy and I having had the most fun yet and determined to own horses one day. Or at least to ride them more often.
Back in town Jeremy and I shopped around a bit, picking up little gifts for the September birthday people (Laura and Eddie. I forgot about Aaron). I bought myself a wonderful fleece that was probably the best purchase I’ve made all year. We dawdled around for a while trying to decide what to do next - I still wanted to rent a car and drive to Yukon Territory, but it was three in the afternoon by then and sadly no longer feasible. We then considered taking the train on its last trip of the year up to White Pass, but it was spendy. So we reverted to our original plan and hiked the trail to Lower Dewey Lake. I would have loved to continue to Upper Dewey as well, but that would have been an all day venture. As it was, hiking a mountain in cold, clear air again revitalized me in a way I haven’t felt since…well, the last time I climbed a mountain. It was wonnnnnnderful. If I could hike mountains for a living, I would. There was one interesting portion where Jeremy and I accidentally got sidetracked on a game trail for quite some time, which quickly became extremely narrow and precarious. Around the time we found ourselves sliding down a sheer rock face with only a bent tree to hang on to, we decided we should probably turn around and find the real trail we had obviously missed. We did so and made it to the lake after a lovely climb through some darkish woods that probably has fairies and things living in it. It had lots of Super Mario mushrooms, anyway.
We finished the day around 6 or so and returned to the ship very happy. Actually, I was really happy and Jeremy was pretty grouchy because he’s convinced himself that he doesn’t like hiking. But the next day he admitted he was glad we had done it, so hopefully that’s a step in the right direction.
And that was Skagway, our favorite day (though all the others were still outstanding). Next time we’ll have to rent the car and take the train, since I’m still sad we missed out on that. The horseback riding was well worth it, though.
Alright, so I’ve got to relearn brevity, apparently, or I’m never going to finish writing about this stuff. I’ll try to wrap up the Alaska adventures in the next post, especially because I’ve got present-day stuff to talk about. My disclaimer for these self-absorbed talkative entries are that they’re more for myself many years down the road when I’m feeling nostalgic, and I in no way expect anybody to read and comment on it all. Probably I should have written that at the beginning. Meh.