Category: History

I’ve got Spring Fever or some such malady – I just want to be gone Exploring all the time. Yesterday I took the motorcycle out to the South Canol Road for a short outing. From my house to the intersection of the Alaska Highway and the Canol Road is...

The Victoria Day long weekend is the first weekend of summer for Yukoners, and most people want to get away somewhere – even if just a road-trip day. The weather forecasts have been erratic so we just decided on Saturday morning to head up the Alaska Highway to “Kluane...

I’m fascinated by the ways that technology is constantly providing new doors to open. Sometimes the doors lead to places that didn’t exist before, sometimes they just take you to the same place via a different route. Over the past few days it’s been Kindle that’s provided a new...

I had to drive down to Skagway yesterday to pick up some stuff from the post office before we go on vacation next Monday. The weather report for Skagway showed clear skies and the forecast was for sunshine and 42 degrees, so it looked like a great day to...

Atlin is having a tough time, there’s no question about that. Back in the early and mid ’90s I used to go there fairly regularly, both by myself and guiding groups on both day trips and overnighters. The ability to take large groups to Atlin ended when the Atlin...

Every now and then I come across something that triggers “man, I’ve gotta see that!” This morning it’s the Aleutian Islands again, prompted by a couple of photographs at the Museum of the Aleutians Web site. I’ve always been fascinated by the Aleutians war – by the difficulty and...

My 21-day adventure on the Coral Princess is over. I’ve now been home for 27 hours and the ship is already so far gone from my mind that it could have been months ago that I was on her. At some point I’ll write up a full review and...

It’s a few minutes after 04:00 am, and we’re about 2½ hours away from picking up the NPS rangers at the mouth of Glacier Bay. It’s looking like a decent day, with a cloud ceiling at about 3,000 feet but no rain. I had a ball yesterday. I think...

There used to be a little gem of a lake on the outskirts of Whitehorse. Easily accessible, Ear Lake had been a popular destination for almost 100 years – even poet Robert Service used to go there, and in a 1905 poem about the future of Whitehorse, he envisioned...

A couple of days ago, history-hunter Michael Gates called me to ask permission to use a couple of photos I took of a Klondike-era grave in a presentation. That spurred the thought that I should update my photos, as my last visit to the site was in 2003 –...