I know; we haven’t talked in a while. In fact we were way up north in Dawson City, YT last time I pounded the keyboard if you want to call that thing on an iPad a keyboard.

Tonight I am in the comfort of my cluttered and messy home pounding my favorite old keyboard.

The trip was very educational; one of the insignificant things I learned is that I don’t write very well when I am on the road. I guess I don’t write very well here either but it is more fun and relaxing here.

We enjoyed Dawson; it was just a fun place to hang out. We were a little bit south and a month or so late for the true midnight sun but it was light enough to snap this pic a few minutes after 11:00 PM.

Alright I can do pics again.

Our hotel in Dawson

I guess we kind of started the long journey home from there; our next planned stop was 332 miles south at Whitehorse, YT. We had an unscheduled stop about an hour south of Dawson.

Remember that tire problem we had in Chicken; we got to unload about half our stuff and change that thing right there beside the road. The first one I’ve changed beside the road in probably twenty years. I got the tire problem taken care of in Whitehorse.

I promised a pic of the service station in Chicken where I almost got the thing fixed a few days earlier; here is that pic.

We did a little site seeing in the rain in Whitehorse but it was mainly just a necessary overnight stop.

Our next overnight stop was Skagway. We weren’t anxious to start that 109 mile drive. Along the way several people had told us we should have gone to Haines instead of Skagway. When we planned the trip we really just kind of flipped a coin between the two and picked Skagway. We were pleasantly surprised; the drive was absolutely beautiful.

We stopped in a little place called Carcross, short for Caribou crossing. We met some very interesting and friendly people in the Visitors Center and also in some of the shops. Carcross, YT will go on my list of favorite places and not just for this trip but for all time.

This pic is of Emerald Lake, a few miles north of Carcross, trust me, the picture doesn’t do it justice.

Skagway proved to be the least favorite place we visited during the entire trip. The only thing we found worthy of a positive comment is a very good seafood restaurant. The place was way too commercial; it was mostly jewelry stores and souvenir shops preying on the cruise ship visitors.

We spent about 30 minutes in town and headed to the country. We spent several hours exploring the back roads and trails in and around Dyea. Dyea was a thriving town during the early gold rush days, the railroad didn’t go there; Dyea didn’t survive.
At one point on our way to Dyea the altimeter on the GPS showed 23 ft. below sea level. We had a good day.

We left Skagway about 9:00PM Monday night aboard the Columbia; we were on our way back to the lower 48. We rode the Marine Highway four nights and three days arriving in Bellingham, WA Friday morning.

The ferry stopped several places along the way. Some of the stops were only for an hour or so and some of them were at midnight or two in the morning. We were in Sitka and Ketchikan for three or four hours in the afternoon, we seized the opportunity to get off the boat for a little while and enjoyed both places.

Upon leaving Bellingham our goal was to get home Sunday. We got a few hours sleep in Butte, MT and Limon, CO and I left Patty and her stuff at her house Sunday about 8:00PM and I came to my house.

Before I quit tonight I will bore you with a few quick stats. We were gone 35 days; we slept in 20 different beds. We put 7,480 miles on the old Chrysler and rode the ferries about 2500 miles if I did the math right.

I have my pics out of the cameras, phone an iPad. I still need to sort and edit them; if I can find 15 or 20 good ones out of the few hundred I took I will try to put something together and post it in a few days.

It was a great run and I can cross another one off the bucket list.

Good Night and God Bless.

Dave