Today must be Skagway, Alaska and the Yukon

I woke up this morning late as my alarm didn’t go off for some reason. I had also tried to use the phone for a wake-up call but that has been having problems this cruise. I had booked an excursion from the ship to Carcross, Yukon. The idea was I had met another couple of Geocachers just prior to sailing on this cruise and agreed to go on this excursion with them. The problem was they divided us up on different buses.

We left just after 830 AM headed north to the Yukon. The trip north would have us cross the Canada/US border into BC and clear Canada Customs then enter the Yukon. There is about 20 km between the the actual Canada/US border stations.

The tour I bought on the ship was conducted by Skagway Street car Tour. I can say our tour guide was excellent. He had previously worked for US National Parks in Denali and Skagway as well as Alcatraz. He had switched over to Skagway Tours last year.

What I can say is he was very knowable about the area’s we went to and seemed to talk almost non stop for 2+ hours it took to get to Carcross in the Yukon. We only made a couple of stops along the way electing to make the stops on the return trip.

some of the mountains along the way

We drove past Carcross and went to Spirit Lake Wilderness Resort for lunch. There they were serving home made soup different sandwiches and pie. I chose the chicken noodle soup and it was very good. The pie is also home made. Overall I thought it was a good lunch for being where we were. One has to remember this isn’t a city but a small town of 400 people in the middle of no where. They do a decent job with what they have.

We finished up lunch and headed north for a few miles to Emerald Lake. Okay Emerald Lake is suppose to be spectacular but there was one small problem. The lake was frozen over so instead of seeing a emerald coloured lake we saw white frozen snow on ice. Here I did Emerald Lake Earthcache since we stopped.

Emerald Lake

Yours truly at Emerald lake

From here it was a quick stop at Is this the smallest desert in the world? to do the Earthcache.

Once we were done we headed to Carcross where we had about 20 – 30 minutes to walk around. I got off the bus at a stop where there was a cache called Cariboo Lookout. I was the first of the year to find this cache.

View from Caribou Lookout

White Pass Train Station

older building in Carcross

Tutshi Memorial cache site – it was missing..

Some of the buildings in Carcross

The Great Caribou cache site – it was also missing.

At the Yukon – BC Border

What was interesting is we arrived back in Skagway and there was almost no one on the streets. This is very different from the Skagway I have seen before. I can say this if you have a chance to do a cruise early in the season it is well worth it.

stop along the way back to Skagway

White Pass Railroad in the background

Red Onion Saloon in Skagway

Downtown Skagway – no one around

I waited for the bus carrying my friends and they were not able to get 1 of the 2 geocaches that were in BC so a suggestion was made to go rent a car and go get one. I know Geocachers are a weird lot but we will do what we will do to get a cache in a location we have not got one before.

They went and rented the car and I went for the ride. Arriving at the said location on the Alaska/BC border we got out of the car to see that the cache was at the base of rock. Great I thought we have 4 m of snow. Upon further indication I soon realized that it was up above us on the rock cliff. Even better since the snow was what we call corn snow so there was a chance one could break through to the bottom not to be seen till one dug them out. Tony went up the hill while we stayed behind for rescue. It didn’t take long before he was up to his knees then his hips. By the time he found said cache he was very wet. The cache was full of water but we found it. We couldn’t sign the log so I took a photo.

TR1Hemi headed to the cache

TR1Hemi finding the cache – full of water

Arriving back in Skagway we did a few more caches in the area like “Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water“. I had done this one back in 2008 and it is still in great shape and the same log book. I did find my name in it.