Wednesday, July 9

At almost exactly the midpoint of our two-month trip, we have arrived at our destination: Skagway, Alaska . From here we will begin our return home, slowly, sailing toward Seattle with the ferries of the Alaska Marine Highway in a direct reversal of the route that the Klondike gold rushers took in 1897-98. But we have been saying since the early planning of this trip that the journey is the destination, and we certainly enjoyed our 3-1/2 weeks' journey across Canada. So what could be more fitting than to be greeted from a Skagway store window by a T-shirt proclaiming this motto?

During that winter of 1897-98 tens of thousands of gold-hungry people descended upon Skagway from all manner of vessels. Now it is gargantuan cruise ships that disgorge thousands of passengers each day upon the streets of Skagway, and the entire economy of the city depends on serving them. The place looks like a movie set, but many of its buildings are real, including the Arctic Brotherhood Hall, with its driftwood facing. This building and fourteen others are owned and have been carefully restored by our National Park Service, and they form part of the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park.

We headed straight for the NPS visitor center and learned all about the gold rush through a walking tour of the historic district, a lecture, and a movie, "Days of Adventure, Dreams of Gold." Some 30,000 people climbed the 33-mile Chilkoot Trail from Dyea to Lake Bennett, where they then built boats to go down the Yukon River to Dawson City. An iconic photograph shows the steady stream of climbers on the "golden stairs" below the summit of Chilkoot Pass, one quarter mile at a 35% grade. When they reached the summit, they met the North West Mounted Police, who would not admit them to Canada without a year's worth of supplies. These weighed a ton, so unless they hired native haulers, they had to make the trip about forty times. Scarcely any of them found gold.