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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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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....
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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And it's Autumn. Scarce has summer passed - arrived, even, then all the trees have turned and the leaves are rattling down the streets.
I notice it today, too many days in the restaurant, a week is all it takes here, and the seasons have changed, winter is in the air, the cats are no longer dying to go outside, in the air is winter. I don't care, my time is to be served serving people, while I'd love to enjoy the poetry and changing hues, to be going for coffee and tasting - however bitter - life outside, it's not going to be happening. Not this year. This is the year I wrap up every ounce, every last grain of Bad Karma I've accumulated this lifetime - every lifetime - and move on. Already the smile thins, I can in my mind's eye picture the sun setting from Nose Hill, picture walking thoughtfully along creeks and speculating on all that that went before, picture panning for gold (and even picture finding it, so vivid is my imagination).
It's only been 2 years, a light sentence, but when it's done it's done.
Outside, all of a sudden without notice or warning and it's Autumn.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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And I visit the casino, with the view to improving my fortunes.
It's hopeless, this, I'm better off buying a lottery ticket, the amount of improving my fortune needs far exceeds any lucky streak this casino can offer.
But I'm looking for opportunity, trying to get out of my box, do different things, and this is one of those things. Never mind that the every fibre of my being resists this, it's where I'm off tonight.
From the moment of entering I'm distracted by the endless rows of VLT's.
I'm not a VLT sort of guy. I'll play them, for a few minutes, but the money goes too quick, the addiction wears thin, the winnings are trivial, the amusement slim and the losses great.
I walk through the dimly-lit maze of VLT's, searching for some games tables. Eventually I find some, but situated, as they are, in the dim light between the forest of VLT's and their attendant zombies I'm not so inspired.
I have a different vision of a Casino, and this isn't it.
I'm picturing, remembering a time when Casinos had a dress code, demanded membership, when the only games were table games - Baccarat, Craps, Roulette, Blackjack, Poker. Where to be there meant you had money to lose. I had a membership in London once, Charlie Chesters, I remember them because they sent me birthday cards, even when I moved back to Canada.
Now, here - and I mean the Alberta Government and the Native Run Casinos - they're all about the VLT's. I know they're great earners, but there's something missing. You follow around the retired people squandering their pensions, or smell them sat in front of their "Lucky" VLT, their pampers on to ensure they don't have to leave, you see the gangsters laundering their drug and other ill-gotten gains - obviously - (and in Victoria they've actually found money stained with dye-packs being laundered in government casinos), you see the single moms squandering their child support and welfare payments, single dads wasting - like me - their EI on the hope that they'll be paid just enough to....
It's bleak. Really bleak. There's no hope here, only despair, and I leave long before my budget's expired.
I have a different vision of a Casino. Where you can only lose money you have to lose, no VLT's, more Croupiers, table games, and everyone is dressed well. Here it's like standing in the welfare-recycling line.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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We find a hotel, not so easy given how long it's been since we've showered, and the daughter was absolutely devoured by the Black Flies in Burns Lake, so we're both covered in scabs and dirt. We end up in a small hotel across from the Macbride Museum, an absolutely perfect local museum of Whitehorse History that's stuffed with Native Artifacts, Taxidermy Animals and Tools from the old gold rush, the original Sam McGee's Cabin.
After exploring the museum we head on down to find the Visitor's Information Center - another World Class facility, with information on pretty much everything you could possibly want to do in the Yukon, displays of Animals and the Precious Gems and Minerals of the area - geodes filled with powery blue crystals, giant smokey quart crystals, emeralds and other finds. And, ever helpful the attendant photocopies us a guidebook to the rocks and minerals of the area, tomorrows plans are already made....
There are pictures of the Dempster Highway, which runs past the Arctic Circle to Inuvik. We're so close, and for another 10, 12 hours drive we could be there....but time on this vacation is limited, and already we've spent far too much time in the car. Next Year.
We walk around the main streets, brightly painted storefronts, it reminds one somewhat of Banff, only a Banff that's infinitely more remote than Banff is, far less "commercial" and much more - well, authentic. It's attracted it's share of tourists, to be sure, but they're the more hardened adventure tourists and wilderness lovers, those here hoping for bigger adventures and off the trail ruggedness that Banff doesn't offer.
I like it.
After dinner we curl up in the hotel room and watch TV. This is a treat I get only every other year, never having it hooked up at home.
London is burning, there are the riots and rioters tearing apart the neighborhoods, Anchors and commentators wondering "Why" when they really should be asking "What's taken them so long?". There's "Billy the Exterminator" - a surreal "reality" show that centers upon an illiterate family of exterminators in Americas South East, the staged wrestling of alligators and snakes, squashing of wasps, absolutely ridiculous. There are other shows, like "Canadian Pickers" and the standard forensic documentaries, YTV, rubbish, and finally it's time for sleep.
***
The next day we head off to go rockhounding. The guidebook copied for us suggests a few locations to go looking for rocks, we settle on the Geodes about Carmacks region and head off. The digging is good and we turn up a few rocks, the drive is absolutely stunning and the road beacons you on and on but we have to turn back, we camp that night beside Fox Lake, a beautiful specimen of Azurite left by an earlier traveler on the picnic table. And no sooner do we begin setting up the tent then it begins to blow and rain.
And rain.
Cooking dinner the pots fill with the rain, we crawl into the tent but the wind blows the fly back and the rain gets inside, all night it pours.
The next morning, still pouring, cold, windy, we pack up and head back to Whitehorse.
***
We explore more. The MacBride Museum is fabulous, and they have a map inlaid with plaster gold nuggets that show the amount of gold that was taken from each claim on the local gold bearing creeks. We take the trolley through town past the homeless encampment on the city hall's front lawn to the SS Klondike, a perfectly preserved steamboat from the day. We look at the bust of Jack London on the main street, grab a coffee at the Starbucks - and here I must note that the new gold rush is in both the Starbucks and Tim Hortons, which duel it out across the street from one another - every time you enter or pass, at any time of day, there's a line up of patrons waiting for their coffee. You can't print money that fast.
We check out a couple of the local art galleries, they're fine, then have dinner at one of the more "local" places.
The town is busy. Small, but they've done a good job of keeping the local character. There's the character bars, the "99", there are enough distractions to keep us busy for the day.
It's a great town, and I have a feeling that it will boom - the wilderness that surrounds it is indeed wilderness, there are countless unexplored mountains and creeks, and if I had the money for real estate I would spend it here, buy up properties downtown and restore them, there will be soon another boom in precious and rare earth metals and prices will skyrocket.
And that's Whitehorse.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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A month later and I'm just finding time to relay the Alaskan adventures now.
The first few days on the road with the daughter (the boy having decided somewhere along the way that he'd prefer to hang with friends in Calgary) - old territory, Jasper, Burn's Lake, camp a couple of days to recover from all the driving, being devoured alive by Black Flies that leave painless bites that stream with blood. The girl is horribly bitten.
Then North, along the Stewart-Cassiers Highway.
This is beautiful, and I can feel it calling....
There are few cars, sometimes only one an hour, and fewer services, gas at $1.50 per liter, stations every 300 KM. The road is somewhat paved, sometimes just gravel, and the road is taking us due North.
We stop - for a break - at a rock shop by the road, nothing of interest, only kitsch souvenirs, we ask the obese lady behind the counter what rocks and where we might go looking, she looks confused - "I dunno...try down by the river..."
"....and what might we find?" I ask, never one to let things go.
"rocks. And driftwood" is her reply.
***
We continue. This landscape is wild, there are no signs of human presence apart from the road, the top half of British Columbia virtually unexplored. A reservation, new vinyl sided houses in yards overgrown with purple weeds, derelict cars, suspicious locals. Not a good place to stop.
And still we go on.
By 6:00 PM we're at the 2nd Jade Shop - Saws, samples, raw jade, pieces thrown away, cut open, a great shop in the middle of nowhere, ridiculous prices, tiny carved bears smaller than a dime for $20.00, somehow they're convinced that their jade, mined at 900 tons per year and shaped in China, is worth more than gold...We are probably they only visitors that day, by the traffic on the road, and seeing all this raw jade - white, uncut, convinces me that we must have found some in our rambles by the river, and not recognizing it for what it was threw it back. The salesgirl assures us it's unlikely, most of the jade here - in this shop - was quarried high up Cassiar's mountain, there is little if any to be found along the rivers and creeks....
I buy the girl a small bear and matching jade cave. "We'll only be here once" I tell her, and this will be her souvenir.
We go on, further north a couple more hours before finding a campsite along a lake.
There are a few campers, the sun is up late - by 11:30 I retire, sun still in the sky, and at night have that Farley Mowatt moment where I hear for the first time the cry of the Loon.
***
It's peaceful up here, in the morning we take down the tent, drink our coffee. We passed a creek back on the road that gave the history of the Cassiar's Gold Rush, we keep our eyes peeled on the road ahead, what few turn-offs there are on the creeks are staked with no-trespassing signs, and we decide to make Whitehorse our next stop.
***
The scenery, the landscape is fantastic. There are long stretches of nothing, then bare and smoothed mountains, it's a country that begs you to get out of the car and just walk. It's new, and it's been too long since I've seen anything new. And on and on the road continues...
We hit the Alaska highway around Noon, across the Yukon border, and begin heading West. 3 hours roughly until Whitehorse. We stop for lunch, a dismal diner off the road and hidden behind a modern-decrepit facade, once inside it's a properly 60's or 70's truckstop, complete with velvet paintings of Indians and wildlife, somehow perfect - not, as you see so often nowadays a mock-up or reproduction, this is the real deal, and somehow it has that homey-smell.
***
Bears, many bears upon the road, we take pictures, and now the highway - the view from the road, it begins to resemble that landscape in my dreams, there's a sense of Deja-vu, as if somehow I've been here before, as if I'm revisiting after a long absence someplace I once knew well in my childhood.
***
In Whitehorse we take a hotel, settle down for the night to explore, go for dinner and walk about the town, a main street or two with brightly painted facades, various gift shops and museums, an incredible amount of vehicles on the road (especially given how small the town is...), but here nobody walks.