Days 78-79
July 30-31, 2016
Skagway, AK to Teslin, YT
Drove from Skagway, AK along the coast through a corner of British Columbia and ended at Teslin, Yukon.
The inter-coastal waterway was just beautiful along the drive north. I had considered taking a train ride on the White Pass & Yukon line, a narrow gauge scenic train that runs on the edge of the mountain up the waterway. As it turns out, I had the same view and saved $122! Incredible! Glaciers on top of the mountains with the blue-colored ice, caused by the silt mixed in with melting under the ice surface. As I went farther north, there was an area known as “moonscape”.
The heavy snow sort of prunes the lower branches of the pine shrubs, while the glacial ice slides across the top of the shrubs, trimming the tops. Nothing else grows up at this elevation except these scrub pines. Very desolate-looking.
Passed through Carcross, YT, formerly known as Caribou-Crossing. There’s a train station there, and it was quite a busy station during the gold rush days.
Carcross has another claim to fame: The world’s smallest desert... It covers about 3 square acres and was made by the winds blowing across the bottoms of dried-up glacial lakes and picking up sand to distribute into dunes.
Otherwise, Carcross isn’t much more than a couple gift shops at a crossroads. I stopped, walked the little girl, and got a couple pictures.
The Campground was called Dawson Peaks with wooded lots right on a lake – sounds good, right? It may have been nice at one time. They seemed to have almost closed down. No internet and no trash pick-up, but lots of mosquitoes and bear warnings. I had made reservations for two nights, so I toughed it out by calling Sunday a quilting day….and binge-watching Breaking Bad on the DVD.
It’s starting to get dark about 11:30 pm now as i make my way south. Kind of miss having 20+ hours of light...
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| See the mountain goats? |
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