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Skagway
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2156
Skagway is nice. An entirely tourist driven economy - it's a stop for the cruise ships - so a few restaurants and lots of pricey gift shops selling native carvings, crafts, mammoth ivory and carved moose antlers, rock shops, other assorted kitsch.
We grab a bite and then check on the Ferry timetable - all in all, Skagway takes about 2 hours to walk around and get a feel for. It's pretty tiny. Initially it was the gateway to the Yukon, prospectors going over the White Pass by rail or on foot, now it's just a stop for cruise ships....
The Ferry leaves the next morning at 6:00 AM, we have to be at the gate an hour before, and so we look for a hotel. 2 in town, There are no vacancies.
Even the staff are surprised.
We go out to a nearby beach, searching for tide pools or small things of interest, nothing really, kill some time, returning to Skagway we pass a hotel that has just put up a vacancy sign - a single room, 2 beds, and we're in luck. I didn't trust myself to wake up in the wilderness at 5:00 AM to get on the Ferry, this solves that problem...
And, that solved, we go for dinner, and on the way we pass a vaudeville show - the Days of '98 Show. The daughter, she's not interested, is in fact mad at me for considering it, and vents her anger upon me when I confirm we're going. The show starts in a half hour, to pass the time we gamble in their mock casino with play money. The girl has a taste for this....And from there into the play.
Now she's resisting, she didn't want to go and so she's refusing to have a good time, looking out of the corner of her eye at the players, finally looking at them straight on, it's amusing, good natured, it's the story of Soapy Smith, well done, not too long and at the end, the daughter, despite herself she enjoyed it.
That done we go for dinner. Tasty Thai food. And then the hotel to sleep and wake up much too early and get on the Ferry....
Ryan Matthew - Oddities
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 1468
Some very good photos of a collection of curios and oddities, as assembled by Ryan Matthews.
Cool.
Link: Ryan Matthews
8 Amazing Garage Sale Finds
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Found
- Hits: 1681
This from Mental Floss - 8 Amazing Garage Sale Finds. More the kind of treasures I'm likely to happen upon...
Link: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/96415
Although, in truth, I think there have been far, far better finds. They just haven't been reported...
Whitehorse to Skagway
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Technology
- Hits: 2234
Having explored Whitehorse - or as much as the deadline would permit - we're off to Skagway. Alaska.
It's a short drive, and we break it up with light amusements. The Yukon Suspension Bridge, a trivial (and missable) tourist attraction on the highway.
I'm excited by the rocks - lots of hard rock, mica schist, the promise of more interesting minerals to come.
Now the drive - Whitehorse to Skagway - is short - perhaps 2 hours - but it's beautiful. The first hour flies - stop at the suspension bridge, wander, into car, but here the terrain changes.
We drive between increasingly high coastal mountains, beneath us a low valley, glacially carved from the granite, adorned with thousands of dwarf pines and tiny lakes. It's a surreal scene. And I take pictures, but none would do it justice.
A valley, between two giant mountains, filled with pine trees - (?) perhaps a foot high, "lakes" as small as a foot wide, thousands of them, you feel - as you look upon it - as a giant....
The road climbs into the mist and drizzle - the view vanishes, hopes for a grand photo vanish. over the White Pass - visibility - perhaps 50 feet, rain, drizzle, up, up, up, then finally down.
Out of the rain and mist and into Skagway.
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