Be a Tourist for the Day

This is an annual event in May during which most businesses have a special to get the summer workers in to familiarize everyone with what is offered. You can't do it all, but you choose from the menu and do what you can. We both had the day off, so...

Sleep 'til 9:00

Put the coffee on...making extra, of course.

I walk to the store to pick up eggs while Peggie starts the bacon frying.

Drink coffee. Shower. Dress. Eat breakfast while browsing blogs. Drink coffee. Post a blog explaining my sacrifice. Drink coffee. Check the list of offerings to confirm our plans.

Noon: exit apartment.

First stop is the Skagway Volunteer Fire Department Car Wash. They close 5th Ave. between State St. and Main St. Entrance is off of Main. Pay, excuse me, donate $10 to the fireman's boot. Drive slowly between pumpers on each side of the street to wet the vehicle, pull forward while 6 or 8 turned-out fireman brush soap on everything, forward again while 6 other firemen continue the scrubbing, then ease slowly between two more pumpers to rinse off the suds. Quick and efficient.

Then to the gas station to top off the tank.

Then to Jewell Gardens for a free tour and a $6 dollar lunch of salmon quiche, salad, and carrot fennel soup. Very good. We bought a season pass so we can go back and visit or sit in the gardens anytime they are open. The formal gardens are extensive and really beautiful.

Then a check at the library for a reserved book and a stop for mail at the PO.

Then out to the helicopter pad for our half price scenic flight. While we are waiting, we chat with fellow passengers and the attendants there. We end up in a group of four on a six passenger aircraft, so we both got window seats.

You can look on a map if you want. We went straight across the harbor up Burro Creek, climbing as we went. There is still a LOT of snow up there.
We went all the way up to the glacier that feeds West Creek and the Taiya River, past many smaller glaciers of the cirque type (see below) and over the ridge, real close to snow covered mountain peaks!!! As we headed back to Skagway we could clearly see the boundary in the inlet where the silt laden rivers encountered the salt water.
Then we circled for an upwind landing and the trip was over about an hour before I wanted it to be. But we got to do it for half price and it was worth full price.
A good way to think of a cirque is as an embryonic glacier. As snow accumulates over long periods of time, it compresses into very dense ice with almost no air in it. When this happens at mountain top level, the ice buildup starts to slide down hill under its own weight. The buildup continues, as during an ice age, and the beginning of the glacier is still at the mountain top while the face of the glacier carves out a valley until it reaches the ocean. When it is flowing down a valley, it is called a valley glacier. When it reaches salt water it is a tidewater glacier, if it doesn't, or if it has retreated back to dry land, it is a terminal glacier. If the main glacier disappears, as at the end of the ice age, but a smaller, higher glacier remains, that is a hanging glacier. The ones that start late in the ice age, and don't get to flowing, or haven't yet started flowing, are the cirque glaciers. North of Skagway are many empty cirques looking like bowls on the sides of the mountains with the ice all gone. Also there are many still filled with glacial ice.

There will be a final exam on this stuff in September.

The Be a Tourist for the Day campaign is kicked off on Thursday night with a Town Show of "The Days of '98 Show." It is a vaudevillian production based on the story of Soapy Smith with lots of singing and campy humor. We never went last year, but did this time, and it was very entertaining.

(Peggie: I'm going to post a "Be a Tourist" photo album with captions. More great pictures, of course.)