Skagway, "1000 Miles North of Worry"

On August 13th it was finally time to head to Alaska - The Great Land, The Last Frontier, Land of the Midnight Sun! Ashley and I stopped to take cliche photos at the sign that welcomed us to the state, and despite the cold and heavy fog, we were giddy with anticipation and disbelief.

In Skagway, at the top of the Southeast peninsula, we stayed with a friend of a friend, Kelly Daigle, and her seven roommates in a house that resembles a double-wide, with a hula skirt as a curtain over the front door and chinsy wood paneling on the interior walls.

Our hosts told us about their adventures as rafting guides, tour bus guides, etc., and they regarded the tourists who are fresh off the cruise ships as, "Newlywed, over-fed or almost dead." I pondered a job in Skagway next summer and did a little networking in this quirky town of 800-something people, where keys are left in car ignitions; where house numbers are non-existent; and where "the odds are good but the goods are odd".

In the evening we played Russian poker with a couple of our new friends, one of whom lives in a hollowed-out, yellow school bus (Christopher McCandless-style but not quite as rustic) with his bi-sexual, German wife. We then went to the Skagway Brewing Co. - "Brew Co" for short - where most of the guides hold second jobs and where a three-piece string band, accompanied by a washboard player who looked native, played lively renditions of songs by Outkast, The White Stripes, etc.