Sunday, June 28, 2009
There is a Song of Joy in my heart as I admire this majestic panorama of mountains, waterfalls and gorges along the White Horse Pass and the Yukon Territory on this train. It stirs passion within my heart as I think about the formation of such beauty. It inspires you to reach out to hold it close to your heart – if that were at all possible.
Today, Sunday, June 28, 2009, we left Skagway, Alaska, aboard the White Pass and Yukon Route Railway. This will only be a 28 mile journey of a possible 67 miles due to the washout of the train base further up the line. It won’t reopen until July 1st. We will disembark at Fraser. This is a narrow gauge railroad with an average 2.6% grade up the mountains. It was built in 1898 during the Klondike Gold Rush and is an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. It has vintage parlor cars that are very comfortable.
The White Horse Pass was one of two trails [the other was the Chilkoot Trail,] out of Skagway that would lead to the Yukon River which allowed the gold rushers to get to Dawson City. Dawson City is actually where the gold was and Skagway was the key launching point where supplies were acquired. Because Dawson City was actually in Canada, and most of the gold rush stampeders were American, the Canadian Government required each person to have one ton of provisions for the journey. This was enough to last for one year. Canada knew that there wasn’t enough provisions in the Dawson City area to accommodate these people and they wanted them to be able to survive.
Our journey is continuing by motor coach from Fraser to Whitehorse, where we’ll spend the night. Besides many photo stops, the first city along the route was Carcross, where we were able to get our passports stamped with a Canadian stamp and there was some excellent ice cream. There were also some historical markers related to some stories mentioned by the motor coach driver. Our first photo stop was a spontaneous one because we saw a bear on the side of the road feeding on berries. He just continued feeding as we took our photos from the motor coach, which was no more than five feet from him.
Our lunch stop was Caribou Crossing. We had the opportunity to visit a wonderful Taxidermy Museum of animals from the area. All of the animals died of natural causes or a non-hunting encounter with man or his creations. I saw Caribou, foxes, rabbits, Lynx, moose, bears, weasels and various birds. It was a delightful museum. They also had new born Huskies for viewing and holding.
The last photo stop was at Emerald Lake. This lake is colored green by a substance called marl that is in the run off from the mountains above. It was truly a sight to behold.
We have arrived at Whitehorse, Yukon Territory Canada. It is the Capitol of the Yukon Territory and has a population of 23,000. What is unique about this is that there are only 32,000 to 33,000 inhabitants in the entire 400,000 square kilometer territory. To put that size in perspective, the states of California, Arizona, West Virginia and Delaware could all fit inside of the territory. There are three territories and ten provinces in Canada and there are thirteen First Nations tribes [we would call them Indians in the USA.]