Cavorting Again in Carcross

We're camped in Tagish, Yukon Territory for five nights.  It's off the beaten track, south of Whitehorse, situated on the Tagish (Six Mile) River.  The road through our village leads one way to Atlin, near the Llewelyn Glacier (which sits behind the Mendenhall Glacier that looms over Juneau Alaska).  Our road leads the other way -- west -- toward Carcross, which sits on the South Klondike Highway that runs from Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, down to Skagway, Alaska.

We are so close to Carcross that we decided to visit it on our first day here.  We visited Carcross in 2016 when we drove to Skagway to spend a couple nights.  You can read about our visit to the village of Carcross in this blog entry.

This time, we crossed a range of mountains, along Windy Arm of Tagish Lake.  The view of the Coast Mountains to the west was awesome:

Because the weather forecast was iffy, we decided to cavort in the Carcross Dunes first, while the skies were dry.  We also have a blog entry from 2016 about the Carcross Dunes, if you're curious.  But in any event, here we are.  It was much different this visit:  no other people to speak of; much colder; and a cloudy day.  Still, we ventured further into the dunes and made a real adventure of it.

While the dunes' area is not large, they swoop upwards toward Caribou Mountain to the northwest, which gives them a scale that is impressive:

Once near the top of the dunes, we could look southwest toward Skagway and the Coast Mountains across Bennett Lake:

The village of Carcross, which sits on the White Pass & Yukon Railway line that runs up from Skagway and historically reached Whitehorse, straddles a channel that connects Tagish Lake with Bennett Lake.  During the Gold Rush, the prospectors climbed the steep Chilkoot Trail from Skagway to the town of Bennett, at the south end of Bennett Lake, and could, from there travel by water continuously up Bennett Lake and the Yukon River to Whitehorse and on to Dawson City, the "City of Gold."

We contented ourselves with views of Bennett Lake across the dunes:

Looking down from the top of the dunes, Kathy couldn't help herself.  She had to run down the steep dune.  Here she is in victory -- no falls!

David followed in this video of his run down the dune.  He almost hit the cinematographer!

The moist weather gave us beautiful views of clouds and mist tucked into the folds of the mountains and the small stream valleys:

This lone, small tree seems to be hanging on to its small piece of real estate, trying to suck moisture from the ground underneath, despite the onslaught of the sandy dunes:

Kathy found a different route back through the dunes, which looked like it would take us directly up to White Pass --

-- but, just over the ridge of sand, we found a track down and across the sloping sand back to the South Klondike Highway and our Jeep:

To give you idea of the entire expanse of beauty in which the Carcross Dunes sit, we took this 360-degree video from atop the dunes, showing the splendor that existed all around us!

Having gotten sand between our toes, we turned up the South Klondike Highway a kilometer or two, to Caribou Crossing, a tourist destination which includes museum, gift shop, petting zoo and sled dog kennel.  Kathy wasted no time buying animal chow to feed the goats, alpacas and ponies.  Here, she poses with one of the two cute alpacas named Thelma and Louise:

Currently, the kennel only holds three puppies, but we were allowed to join them in their play-yard and cuddle them --

-- while their mama, a female called North, watched over her puppies with a concerned eye:

By this time, it was noon and David was getting hungry, so we drove into the village of Carcross to feast on a lunch of elk sausage and bison burger.  We made stops at the tourist information center and the park information center for the Chilkoot Trail.  Lo and behold, there were TWO RED CHAIRS!  We couldn't resist taking a photo for Kathy's collection:

 

We watched visitors arrive on the daily train up from Skagway, walked around the center of the village, but made a hasty retreat to the Jeep when the sky suddenly opened up with a heavy shower.  This was our cue to head back to our campground in Tagish and plan tomorrow's adventure.

Stay curious, my friend!