In Skagway the thing to do is ride the train along the White Pass. Being the tight wads that we are, we opted to rent a car and drive along the same route, rather than drop $340 on the train tickets.
Those poor (literally, after the price of those tickets) suckers couldn't pull over any time they felt like it for photo ops like this.
And they definitely didn't get to traipse through the moss-covered forest. How can I get my lawn to look and feel like that? Money is no object.
This was our very first bear sighting, and we were SO giddy. Little did we know it would be the first of many (dramatic foreshadowing...check). It was a little glacier bear cub, and we were hoping we'd get to meet Mrs. Glacier Bear, but no such luck.
Driving along the Klondike Highway was insane. Every few minutes the terrain would be totally different. These next few pictures are what I imagine Mars looking like.
This was our second bear sighting - right outside our window. It was so fun to just watch him move. He seemed oblivious to our presence and just did his thang.
Didn't even bother to check for cars.
Most of these pictures were taken while we were driving, some even through the nasty window, so be grateful for the few decent shots that I managed to capture.
This was our third or fourth bear encounter. This one looks tiny in the picture, but he was honkin'!! He could have ripped my head off with a sneeze. So I'm glad he didn't sneeze. Some idiot couple pulled up behind us and got out of their car and walked closer to the bear! What?? It's a bear, people, not a puppy! I'm not going to lie, we were talking about how much our bear-attack footage would sell for.
Too bad our camera doesn't have peripheral vision, because then maybe you could see that this is one of the most breathtaking beaches that exists. If the population of the town it's in (Carcross) couldn't fit in a phone booth, I might consider moving there.
This was Emerald Lake, and you wouldn't believe how emerald the water was. Crazy.
Who knew that the smallest desert in the world was in Alaska? Just kidding, we were in Canada at that point. But still, BC is known to receive butt-loads of rain, so how can there be an itty-bitty desert right smack in the middle of it? I don't know, but you can bet we gathered some sand for our sand collection.
Bear number four or five was treating himself to a nice cold one out of the water pipe. We watched him splash and play for a bit.
We lost count after awhile. Just kidding, we didn't; the grand total was 7. (Three black, three brown, and one glacier, to be precise.)
Lance bet me that I couldn't set the timer on the camera and make it all the way to the sign before it went off. Boy did he feel sheepish. P.S. Og, the sound in the video below turned out to be a nearby dog-mushing camp. Scary stuff. We thought for sure it was murder. And torture. But not in that order, obviously.
In Skagway the thing to do is ride the train along the White Pass. Being the tight wads that we are, we opted to rent a car and drive along the same route, rather than drop $340 on the train tickets.
Those poor (literally, after the price of those tickets) suckers couldn't pull over any time they felt like it for photo ops like this.
And they definitely didn't get to traipse through the moss-covered forest. How can I get my lawn to look and feel like that? Money is no object.
This was our very first bear sighting, and we were SO giddy. Little did we know it would be the first of many (dramatic foreshadowing...check). It was a little glacier bear cub, and we were hoping we'd get to meet Mrs. Glacier Bear, but no such luck.
Driving along the Klondike Highway was insane. Every few minutes the terrain would be totally different. These next few pictures are what I imagine Mars looking like.
This was our second bear sighting - right outside our window. It was so fun to just watch him move. He seemed oblivious to our presence and just did his thang.
Didn't even bother to check for cars.
Most of these pictures were taken while we were driving, some even through the nasty window, so be grateful for the few decent shots that I managed to capture.
This was our third or fourth bear encounter. This one looks tiny in the picture, but he was honkin'!! He could have ripped my head off with a sneeze. So I'm glad he didn't sneeze. Some idiot couple pulled up behind us and got out of their car and walked closer to the bear! What?? It's a bear, people, not a puppy! I'm not going to lie, we were talking about how much our bear-attack footage would sell for.
Too bad our camera doesn't have peripheral vision, because then maybe you could see that this is one of the most breathtaking beaches that exists. If the population of the town it's in (Carcross) couldn't fit in a phone booth, I might consider moving there.
This was Emerald Lake, and you wouldn't believe how emerald the water was. Crazy.
Who knew that the smallest desert in the world was in Alaska? Just kidding, we were in Canada at that point. But still, BC is known to receive butt-loads of rain, so how can there be an itty-bitty desert right smack in the middle of it? I don't know, but you can bet we gathered some sand for our sand collection.
Bear number four or five was treating himself to a nice cold one out of the water pipe. We watched him splash and play for a bit.
We lost count after awhile. Just kidding, we didn't; the grand total was 7. (Three black, three brown, and one glacier, to be precise.)
Lance bet me that I couldn't set the timer on the camera and make it all the way to the sign before it went off. Boy did he feel sheepish. P.S. Og, the sound in the video below turned out to be a nearby dog-mushing camp. Scary stuff. We thought for sure it was murder. And torture. But not in that order, obviously.