SE Alaska Part 4: Skagway and the Yukon

A new day, another little plane, and another storm. Our destination was Skagway and our only option was via Alaska Seaplanes as it is not served by Alaska Airlines and there were no ferries on that day. The forecast was for a new atmospheric river storm, so given our 6am Gustavus cancellation two days earlier we weren’t sure what to do. I’d originally booked a 6am flight, but we changed it to 9am and then hoped for the best.

Somehow it happened and our flight took off. The landing was quite bumpy as it was pretty windy arriving in Skagway. After arriving, we walked over to Avis and picked up our rental car. Skagway is small and pretty walkable, but it’s also one of the few places we visited during the week that has a road connected to anything else, so our destination for the day was Yukon, Canada.

Based on the recommendation of the informative guy at Avis, on the way out of town we made a few short stops. The first was at Lower Reid Falls and the Gold Rush Cemetery. It would be about 2 miles to walk, so it’s accessible on foot or any of the local tours go by these spots.

The second was the ghost town of Dyea. Now part of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, Dyea was a boomtown around 1897 that rose and fell quickly. It was the start of Chilkoot Trail, which was one of the options for prospectors heading to the Yukon looking for gold. Today, it’s mostly fields and forest.

After Dyea, the Klondike Highway climbs quickly towards Canada. It’s about 15 miles from Skagway to the Canadian border. The crossing was simple and the scenery was stunning.

The road goes through a small portion of British Columbia before entering Yukon.

We continued on to Carcross which is another 15 miles from the Yukon border. Carcross is a tiny town with a small cafe/brewery and some historic buildings. It looked like most of the traffic through comes from tourism.

We ate a pleasant lunch at The Bistro. Through the day, we had escaped most of the rain, but it was a chilly day, so soup and grilled ham and cheese hit the spot.

Just outside of Carcross is the Carcross Desert, known as the smallest desert in the world. And just north of that is Emerald Lake, which has a beautiful green color.

About 35 miles north of Carcross is Whitehorse, a genuine city. It was late in the afternoon by the time we arrived, so we didn’t really do anything, just drove around town a bit to see what it looked like. I have added Yukon to my list of places to explore more.

We did stop at Miles Canyon on the Yukon River for a short walk to the river and over a footbridge.

And then on the return to Skagway we drove a short portion of the Alaska Highway/Route 1 until the turnoff on Highway 8 took us back to Carcross and Skagway.

Skagway relies heavily on cruise ship traffic, so there are not actually a lot of hotels, many of the restaurants close early, and the streets are very quiet in the evening. We arrived back in Skagway, returned our rental car and then walked over to our hotel for the night.

The next morning it was still raining and we started walking around to explore the town. Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park has a visitor’s center along with a few other sites around town including the Moore Homestead. One popular activity is the White Pass & Yukon Railroad, but since we had driven the route the day before, we didn’t take the train ride.

After awhile, we got tired of walking around in the rain, so we stopped at Klondike Brewing.

And then had dinner at Alaska House Restaurant. They had a small veggies garden in their courtyard, so they were growing some of their own produce.

And the last activity for the evening was to jump on the Fjord Express Ferry to Haines.