Westmark Inn Skagway

... of Fireweed its brilliant magenta now dusty and cottony and still beautiful covering entire hillsides. There's mineral-green water splashing over rocky riverbeds and thundering waterfalls and very Very Scary Places Where You Hope the Train Does Not Derail and Plunge into a Crevasse. <br> More than one train travels the route and looking out the window we can see the train ahead Waaaay up on the mountainside and wonder how the ...

... by whales in several different pods. (Whales travel in pods; fish travel in schools, but whales are smarter.) Some were Orcas, but there seemed to be two or three other varieties as well. It was hard to count whales when they were diving all around the ferry and coming up on different sides, but we estimated that we saw at least twenty and maybe more. <br><br>Arriving at 8pm in Petersburg on the 1st, we found a small town built on the fishing industry, with an ...

... in record time to ferry hopeful prospects up, and for a while Skagway had more than 30,000 residents. That died very quickly once the gold rush ended, and the city was all but deserted until Pearl Harbor, after which the U.S. Army arrived overnight &#8211; unannounced &#8211; seized control of the railroad (which required extensive repairs) and used Skagway as their staging point to get supplies up to support the building ...

... of the ship and wandering around in the rain and mist. We headed north, stopping on the way to provision for Mount McKinley. We found our log cabin hide-away sitting beside a sparkling stream just south of McKinely Park and on Thursday took a 3-hour hike on the Three Lake Trail. Climbing up above the lakes and trekking along paths that crossed the ridges, we could see mountains all around us. We scrambled down to the first lake and found a beaver lodge on the edge that measured 15 feet ...

... organization. <br><br> Mud Bay Road was another beautiful drive with views of the water and glaciers. Watched about 6-10 young eagles flying in the trees next to the road. They didn&#8217;t venture out very far and were constantly chasing each other. The small boat harbor was very picturesque. The end of the road is Chilkat State Park. Great views of Davidson Tidewater Glacier and the Rainbow ...

... a pose for the camera before continuing down the hill to lunch. <br><br> But rather than settle for an overpriced meal in the depot, Jonathan surprises us with a cooler of Alaskan Summer Ale to accompany an impromptu picnic lunch in one of the railside tents. Just as we're ready to dish it up, one of the trainmen asks us if we want to see a bear, so we hop out and ...

Ahhh. It's easy to see why this place is called Happy Camp. We'll actually be hiking a mile farther today than yesterday, but with considerably less steep grades, descending from high alpine to boreal forest, passing several lakes in the process. But aside from the good news to come, this is a very welcome place. Like the other camps, we have good sturdy platforms to set the tents on, the privacy of outhouses, a convenient ...