To Skagway – for scenery and shopping
On Boxing Day, Cathy and I went out looking for deals in Whitehorse. The only deal we found was at Staples, where you could get Norton Antivirus for $10 – there was an unstated catch that you could only get the $25 rebate on 1 copy, though, so I didn’t even get that deal as it turned out (if I would have know that, Cathy could have bought her own!). How’s a guy supposed to be a good capitalist/consumer when the stores won’t play? But I got a call from Wings of Alaska that a garage mat I ordered from AutoAnything.com had arrived, so off to Skagway we went yesterday to try again.
Now Skagway isn’t normally on Yukoners’ list of places to go shopping, but we get some great deals there. Yesterday’s highlight was found at the Klothes Rush shop on Broadway – a good winter jacket marked down from $130 to $20(!) but we also got a few other items of clothing at over 50% off. The garage mat saved me about $140 over what I could get it for anywhere in Canada, so I guess that counts as a Skagway deal too.
The bonus to a Skagway trip is, of course, the scenery, and yesterday was superb – not “perfect” weather, but dramatic.
There’s still a fair bit of open water on some of the big lakes, and the layers of icy fog seen here were caused by that open water on Lake Bennett. The ice crystals in the air in turn caused the sundog seen in front of Montana Mountain. Normally you’ll see a sundog on each side of the sun, but because the ice in the air was localized there was only one this time.
Emerald Lake is always good for a stop – how can you have too many photos like this in your collection? 🙂
Traffic was almost non-existent – we met 2 vehicles during the 80 minute trip between Carcross and Skagway. Yukoners don’t do much non-essential travel at -26°C., and Alaskans do even less. At Log Cabin, however, there were a dozen or so vehicles parked by folks who were out snowmobiling. It’s a really poor winter for sledding so far (very little snow), so I guess you take any opportunity to get your $8,000 toy out.
An even bigger surprise was seeing 3 people and a dog heading up the White Pass on skis. I drove past them, then did a u-turn and came back to get this photo from the side of the highway.
When we left home the Skagway weather said it was -21°F and very windy (gusting to 37mph). When we found it calm at the White Pass summit we assumed that the wind had died, but in Skagway the north wind was indeed howling – I’m intrigued by which valley it was coming down.
On the way back to Whitehorse we stopped at the cabin to get some files and update my “webcam” image. The short daylight hours meant that our short trip took from sunrise until after sunset!
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