Update for July 14th, 15th and 16th..
July 14th
Up about 7am and Dale headed down to the river to see if he could see any animals. He caught one beaver sitting around. We gassed up at the campground for 159.9 per liter. Highest price of gas yet.
There was light rain around Muncho Lake. Saw 5 individual black bear today, just grazing at the side of the road. We also came across a herd of Bison with several young ones. They took up the whole highway, just meandering along at their own pace. We watched for awhile and finally they got out of our way enough we could go on. Scraggly looking creatures. Later on we found 3 grizzly bears feeding on “verge”, a combination of different vegetations in the ditches up here. They were in no hurry either. We watched them for about 10-15 minutes before Mama Bear lifted her head, sniffed the air and ambled off toward the trees with her last year’s youngsters (?) behind her. Saw a couple of more single bison and another small herd at the edge of the trees.
Ate lunch at an overlook and Dale took a short nap. Drove into Watson Lake and stopped at the Sign Forest. 75,000 signs from all over the world! Many are license plates; some are homemade signs with names and addresses. It was started in 1942 when a young solider working on the Alaskan highway hung up a sign on a post with his hometown and an arrow on it. It grew from there steadily from there. We had stopped here in 1979 on the way back from Alaska, but I certainly didn’t remember many signs. A list of years hanging in the visitor center said there were 6,700 + signs in 1988 (nothing listed prior to that). Dale took many pictures of Nebraska signs. The Visitors Center there had a lot of interesting history about the building of the Alaskan Highway. It was built in about 9 months as part of the military effort in WW II by the US. Given the harsh environment and equipment they had back then, it just don’t seem possible they could build it in that short of time over that rough terrain. It was not a very good road, but good enough for military supply convoys. In the soft spots they built corduroy roads (logs laid side by side with dirt over the top). The next couple of years were spent making better bridges and improving the road. In 1946 it was sold back to Canada, who rebuilt a significant portion of it. Today it is all black top, but I don’t think it was all black topped in 1979 when we were up here.
Gassed up there and drove until 7 pm when we pulled into the Dawson Peak Campground and RV Park just a little ways from Teslin in the Yukon. Good WiFi until about 10:00pm. They must have shut it down. Mosquitoes are thick here. Dale went down to the lake a couple of times, but the mosquitoes drove him back inside before long each time.
Not much traffic in this area, so driving is easy and usually can slow down to see the animals. We’re headed for Skagway tomorrow, about 260 miles.

July 15th,
We spent last night at Dawson Peak Lodge and RV Park after passing several RV and lodges that were closed. Very nice, small park and had decent WiFi. They didn’t tell us they turned it off at 10:00 and we were both on the web when it went off! Dale saw no animals on his morning venture down to the lake. I think he was a bit disappointed.

This was the worst area for mosquitoes that we have been in so far. They are just thick here. After leaving the park we discovered that the mosquitoes were coming into the coach from the enclosure under the sofas. Wished I’d had a movie of Dale swatting the things as he drove! At one stop I finally got out the bug wipes and wiped down the opening into the coach and that seemed to help. Either that or they had all already been killed or died! Saw one black bear today. At Jake’s Corner we took Hwy 8 across to Carcross then Hwy 2 down to Skagway. This highway was not paved in 1979 when we took it out of Skagway after coming off of the ferry. It was new in 1978 and wasn’t paved until the late 80s and early 90s. When we drove it in 1979 I remember it being coarse red gravel.

Anyway, the drive in today was lovely. Plenty of beautiful scenery up about 3,000 feet. Cold and blustery. Snow along the road and alpine like vegetation, lots of rock formations and steep grades. In places the clouds hung low over the tops of the mountains, really pretty. The canyon walls here had many pretty little waterfalls and “weeping walls”. I managed to get one picture. What is so neat is that you have this cold weather, and snow almost to the road and there is this patch of wildflowers growing! Found that the flowers are called Fireweed and grow in abundance up at the higher elevations.

We went thru US customs about 12:35pm Alaska time and drove into Skagway about 1 o’clock. Found where to buy Dale a ticket for a boat ride to Juneau and back on Monday. We decided to camp at the bayside campground near where he catches the boat. Dale went to watch a ferry and I took a short nap. When he came back we went to eat at a place on the wharf and then took a walk around the town.

Skagway has really commercialized since we were here last. Many little shops with every other shop a jewelry store. Most were closed as it is Sunday evening but I’ll explore more tomorrow while he is gone. I found a quilt shop that I had found on the internet and will visit that also. We figure part of the reason for the commercialization of the area is due to the advent of the cruise ships that now come up the inland passage. That and the paving of the Klondike Highway that was gravel when we were here before. One cruise ship was here today when we got in and it left while we were eating supper. One sign indicated 18 different ships have been here this year and one has been here 6 times with most being here 3 or 4 times.

July 16th, Monday.
Not much exciting for me today. Dale barely got on the boat before it left early! (The boat left as soon as everyone was there, Dale just happened to be the last one.) He was so afraid that he would miss the boat because of the time change and we didn’t have an alarm clock. He was up early but got to reading! He’ll write more from Juneau when he gets back.

I had fun walking around town this morning and looking at all the little shops. I did find the quilt shop and bought one small quilt kit that will be a reminder of Alaska. The streets were very crowded with all the tourists from the three cruise ships in town. It was more fun to watch the people than shop! But all the benches were taken up by the husbands waiting for their wives. I bought a cup of salmon chowder and bought it back to the camper to eat. Later I went back downtown and found some postcards. It is cool, cloudy and blustery and rain is expected this afternoon. After buying my postcards I spent the rest of the afternoon writing some notes, reading my Nook and surfing the internet. Around 7:45 I walked down to the wharf to wait for Dale’s ferry to come in. I had both my jackets on to keep out the wind off of the water. The ferry was pretty much on time, it came in at 8.17pm. We walked back downtown Skagway to a pizza place for supper.

I, Dale, took a tour called Fjord Express to Juneau today from Skagway. It started with a 30 some mile ride on a 65’ catamaran through Lynn Canal, the longest (90 miles) and deepest (1,800’) glacial fjord on the continent. Much of the way the canal, or inlet, has steep mountains on each side. Not sheer cliffs, but steep enough you can see a lot of rocks between the trees and there was still lots snow on top of many of them. The gorge continues down in the water as they said many places it is 250’ deep 25’ off shore. They said more snow than usual for this time of year, as they have been colder than normal this summer. This resulted in lot of waterfalls big and small. It is really beautiful.

The boat carries 54 plus crew of 2 or 3 and was about half full, so we had plenty of room to stand up and move around. It was enclosed, except for the last 10’ feet or so that made a nice deck for standing. It was real good that it was enclosed, as it would have been cold otherwise, but it was nice and warm and the windows were clean and clear, not like some tour boats where you can hardly see out. It moved real good out in the open water and was real smooth even though the water seemed a bit rough. The tour guide said it was a fairly clam day? I liked it on the back in the open. Most places there where you stood the cabin shielded you from the wind and spray, so it was pretty nice most of the time.

The captain talked a lot of about the history and geology and general things of interest through much of the trip. He also knew where to look for animals and we saw seals, sea lions, eagles and humpbackwhales. Whenever we saw something, he would slow down the boat and even stop and turn the boat so we could get a better view. That was good except the boat had quite a bit of rock when he did that. It didn’t bother me, but it is a good thing Dawne did not go, as that might not have sat well with her. While we saw the blowing (where they blow water into the air when they breathe) of a lot of whales, we only actually saw a few close up and I only got pictures of a couple, but it was great fun. We would see a blowing off in the distance and we’d go rushing over there and slow down and wait for them to surface again. They would blow 4 to 6 times and then dive for 5 to 7 minutes. When they dive their tail fin comes up out of the water and you know they will be gone for awhile, so we’d move on to the next one. The trouble is it is hard to tell exactly where that blow you saw in the distance actually was and how far from there the whale moved before it surfaces again. Sometimes we would be looking in front of us and someone would see it behind us.

It is salmon fishing time here. At certain times the commercial fishermen get the OK to fish in certain areas for two or three days. I think he said they only get this OK about 6 times a season and depends on the number of fish being spotted in certain areas. One of the areas they were working on the day of our tour was an area of the inlet we went through. The fishing boats will string out a net about 1,200’ long with a pink buoy at the end with smaller bobbers along the net to the boat. There are a lot of these boats in one area (I could see 29 at one time) and we had to make sure we did not hit any of the nets or our captain had to pay for the net and a day of missed fishing. While the buoys were not too hard to see, I had a real hard time seeing the bobbers, even with binoculars, until we were pretty close. Sometimes it is really tricky telling which buoy is connected to which boat, as the net often goes one direction for a ways and then another direction. We helped the captain look for the nets, while he wound his way through the maze. I wasn’t much help, but a couple of old ladies did pretty well at picking out the nets. They must have had better binoculars than me!! These little fishing boats hauled their catch to a bigger boat about 3 times a day and when the bigger boat gets full it goes to the cannery.

They dropped us off about 16 miles from Juneau and bused us in, as that is much faster than taking the longer boat ride to a closer wharf. We saw a black tail deer, eagles and a black bear on the way in to town. All the elementary schools have big fences around them to keep the bears out (it is a law). The bus driver gave us a tour around historic Juneau and then we had about 2 ½ hours on our own for lunch and exploring. Where he dropped us off is right where the cruise ships come in. One was coming in just as we got off, so I watched him dock and then decided I’d better eat lunch before all those people got off. I ate right on the harbor with a view of all the activity going on in the harbor and there was a lot of it. The float planes dock right below the restaurant and they came and went all the time. Two more cruise ships came in for a total of 4, as one was already there when we got there. One cruise ship stopped in the harbor and they used the life boats to ferry people ashore with each of these little boats holding about 100 people. Then there were helicopters flying up and down the valley as well as other little boats running around.

After lunch I walked up and took pictures of the state capital. Then wandered down the main tourist street where a lot of the cruise ship passengers were coming up from the other direction. It was really packed. At the wharf there were all kinds of cruise passengers and people selling tour packages. The bus then took us to Mendenhall Glacier. Of course a lot of buses from the cruise ships were also going up there. Our bus driver said when 4 ships are in town there are 125 to 150 buses running around Juneau, which isn’t that big, and most of the buses end up at the glacier in the afternoon. There are only 5 spots for buses to unload and load, so you have to wait to get unloaded and then wait to get loaded. When we were waiting for our bus so we could load back up to leave, I counted 16 buses in line waiting to get to the load/unloading area. The glacier is big and amazing, but I think the Columbia Glacier in Jasper Park was more impressive. While we did not go out on the glacier, the chucks of ice floated down the river and people were grabbing them and getting their picture taken with the ice. As you would guess this placed was packed with people, so that took away some from the glacier. The helicopters fly out over the glacier and at one time I could see 10 helicopters out there.

The trip back was similar to going down with working our way through the fishing boats, chasing whales, checking the sea lions, watching the eagles and looking at the fantastic scenery. It was 12 hours well spent.