Adventures With Dave

In Skagway, we hired a personal tour guide to show us around. That is him below. His name is Dave and despite the goofy photo, a really smart guy. He picked us up from the train station in the middle of nowhere and took us into the Yukon.

There was another family in his van. He had driven them from Skagway to the train station. We were all going to go to Emerald Lake together, then they would be put on the train back to Skagway. Dave would drive us back.

Somehow, it all worked. Initially, there was some confusion because Dave was expecting two women instead of us. He had room for us in the van, but he was worried about what had happened to the two women. He brooded about it much of the trip. It wasn't until the end that we realized he thought Lindsay and Melissa were two women. We were the two missing women.

Dave had lots of stories and kept us well-entertained. We were especially happy when the other family got on the train. It is not that they were bad people or meant to be annoying, but it was a relief to have Dave to ourselves.

This is proof that we made it into the Yukon. It was nice to have a personal photographer take our photos.

The shot above is what most of the scenery looked like on the drive. We were a little scared at times when Dave was driving and looking off to the side of the road for things to show us. I kept my mouth shut, but there were times a wanted to scream that I didn't care about the goats on the mountain and to keep your eyes on the road.

Emerald Lake, above, was worth the drive. We couldn't go down to the water, but the view from above was good enough.

Once we got back to Skagway, Dave was trying to find some bears to show us, but we weren't interested. We've seen bears and didn't feel the need to see more. We asked him to just drive us around the town. I enjoy looking at old buildings, people's homes and gardens. So, Dave drove up and down the streets and even showed us his house and his sister's house. Dave has one of the nicest homes in town.

It is a small town and took about five or ten minutes to see it, but it was interesting. There are still boarded up, abandoned cabins from the gold rush days. It reminded me of Ireland where there are so many abandoned homes in ruins left over from the famine. I'm used to living in a city that just keeps getting bigger. It seems strange there are places around that lost a huge part of their population so quickly.