From Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada to Haines, Alaska

Our last night in Whitehorse we found a lovely secluded area by a lake and had our tea there, while Stu did his best to communicate with the wolves we could hear....with no luck! Check out the educational video on how to identify the location of a wolf's den. Calling them then listening for a response is a proven method. This short movie will show you how simple it really is.
It's a Wolf!!!

We left Whitehorse fully stocked up with groceries, water and got rid of our grey and black water....this can cost up to $20 at some places to do, so fortunately there was a service station near Walmart where it was free!  There was a bit of light drizzle when along the way, but it stopped when we reached "the smallest desert in the world"....Carcross Desert.

Stu and I climbed up to the top of one of the dunes and had amazing views of this lake.

We stopped in at the small town of Carcross where we noticed a few busloads of people coming and going...it is a tiny community that have done a great job making their town attractive to tourists in a very tasteful way.

Stu checked out his accommodation he'll be moving into in the next couple of years.....

It was raining though and bloody cold, but it was a nice place to have a look around and stop for lunch.

We were heading to Skagway, Alaska which was about a 150 km drive.  This would normally take a couple of hours, but took us about 7 hours.

The country was desolate, cold, rainy, stunning, spectacular, breathtaking, rugged, inhospitable, amazing.....

It was also a bit busier than any of the roads we had been on....lots of tourist buses,

RV's, cars...but all coming from Skagway.  We stopped at an old town site called Log Cabin and was a gold rush town, thriving in the late 1800's.  There were some photos on boards and a couple were of members of the Good Family.  If you ignore the bad haircuts, the resemblance to Dad and Paul was uncanny in a couple of them...I couldn't believe it.

 The guy below on the left bears a striking resemblance to Dad in his younger days.  Will have to get someone in the family to chase up a bit of Good Family history!!!

 We eventually reached the Alaskan border...high up on a Pass, where visibility was about 20 metres.  We couldn't believe it...it is supposed to be a stunning drive and we saw NOTHING!!!

Once we started descending the Pass visibility improved and it was like rainforest country.....and we made it into Skagway.  The first thing we saw was a massive cruiseship,

then another one, and another one and it went on...5 in total! 

The small town of Skagway went from approx 1000 people to 12 000 people in the space of a couple of hours. This explained the increase in traffic on the Highway.  Skagway is nestled between big steep mountains, and the main industry is tourism. People were constantly taking helicopter

and plane rides to check out the views, which were pretty spectacular.

  Basically shopping is all you can do there unless you leave the town and the place was heaving with tourists. 

We did drive up to a lookout of the bay....

and I had to sympathise with this lady trying to get a photo....

We hated it and it helped rationalise our decision to not do a cruise on a big ship.  I know a lot of people who have done it and loved it, but it's not for us. We found an expensive RV park....we asked for a site with no power or water...$30! The RV park was a disgrace...the office was dirty and messy, grass unmown, rubbish everywhere.  Skagway is one of the big tourist towns along the Inside Passage and this guy should have been given a rap across the knuckles for allowing a RV Park to be like that!!  So we couldn't wait to get out of the town.....and caught the ferry to Haines, Alaska the next day.

The ferry trip cost about $130 all up including the RV....the best $130 we have spent so far...getting out of Skagway!  We loved the ferry trip...it only took about an hour and the scenery was amazing. Waterfalls starting at the top of the mountain and plunging into the ocean,

snow capped mountains, lush green trees...just fantastic!

I bought myself a fantastic rain jacket ($30) from Skagway which saved me on the trip as it was pretty cold and windy, but we wanted to be outside to take everything in.

We had chatted to a guy from Haines while we were on the ferry and he told us about a good camp site at a lake, so once we were off the ferry

and had been to the Visitor's Centre, we made our way to the lake and our campsite for the night. 

back to the peace and quiet and tranquility. 
And here's a video of the last few days.....Skagway to Haines and further