Jake's Corner to Juneau Alaska 6/23/08

We started out from Jake’s Corner this morning and headed for Carcross YT. Walked around Carcross and it was very early.


We ended up getting a site for our coach for the next two nights and headed out for Skagway AK with just the car. What an interesting town.

this is an aerial shot of Skagway on the road back from Dyea

It was originally a mining town for the start of the gold rush up to the klondike. It’s very touristy so we just walked around a little and had some lunch then headed for Dyea. What is now Dyea National Park was originally where the miners came to start for the gold rush, but then the railroad and the tides worked against it and Skagway won out. Dyea was much farther inland and when the tides were up and the ships came in they actually put peoples belongings on to rafts and they just had to try to get it to land. If the tides were out then they just pushed the goods off the boat and wagons had to come out to retrieve them. You can see why Dyea was not the ideal spot. I think I heard that when the fortune seekers were coming north they had to have one years worth of provisions when they started out. While carrying our stuff to spend one night in Juneau I was thinking how heavy everything was. Can you imagine carrying one years worth of provisions? I think I have a pioneer spirit, but don’t know if I have the fortitude. All in all it was a nice hike and we saw evidence of bear in a few spots. There were a few piles of old skat and one that looked pretty fresh. No bear though whew.
While waiting to drive our car on board the ship I called the kids and discovered that one of the ships waiting in the harbor was the ship that our son and dil were on for their honeymoon. Anyway, we are now on the Columbia Ferry which is going to take us to Haines

and then to Juneau for the night. Onboard ship we got tons of photos. The views were just beautiful. We did spot a whale and got a video clip of basically just the water being spouted and his fin. We did see him, just not recorded as a still shot. We also saw a couple of porpoises playing in front of the ship. Sorry Shelly didn't get a still shot of that either, but the video clip shows them leaping lol.
Don't want to put all of the pics on here (it would take waaay too long)but here are just a couple.


We got into Juneau at 12:30 in the morning and still had to get out car and find the hotel. This is where I really miss having the coach and one of the first times that the gps was right on (thankfully). It was a very long day.
Tomorrow we hope to do some exploring before we have to be back onboard ship to return to Skagway.