I was a big fan of “Northern Exposure”. In fact, I just watched the series again recently. New York City Doctor in the wilds of Alaska makes for some fun television, mostly due to the quirky locals. It seems wild and unsettled.
Walking the streets of Skagway after the cruise ships leave port, I can almost imagine I am in fictional “Roselyn”, Alaska. A moose would be right at home on the boardwalks of Skagway. The streets practically roll up when the tourists leave. But when morning comes, thousands flood the streets and Skagway is once again a circus. In the daytime hours, Skagway is more like Myrtle Beach or Atlantic City with endless crowds of people wandering aimlessly down main street. I prefer the quiet hours after the clowns go home.
Skagway is quirky with lots of history. They are proud of their lawless past. The national park service has renovated multiple buildings as part of Klondike National Park to give visitors a sense of what the Gold Rush was like. There are also plenty of local coffee shops and bars. There are even a few general stores where people can outfit themselves with practical items for life in the Alaskan Wilderness.
But I am greatly disappointed to see that many (maybe most) buildings are owned by the cruise lines and filled with cheap jewelry and endless look alike souvenirs. The ships even have shopping coordinators to tell you which shops to visit (hint: usually the ones they own). I am not interested in the corporate takeover of heritage towns. I will resist my rant of what has happened to heritage areas once “Hard Rock cafes” and “Coach” buy up historic buildings for retail opportunities… Money can restore. Money can also ruin the very culture that made it memorable….but I digress.
Some local shop owners have incorporated hand crafted art and artifacts into the shops. You come for the native artifacts and leave with a magnet (at least they hope so). Others have art made of bone and wood and glass. I wonder, who buys a $5,000 whale sculpture made of driftwood and abalone? Not this girl.
At a corner discount store, a clerk approaches my husband. “You look strong”, she gushes. I raise my eyebrows. He smiles. “Can you help me?” She asks. He agrees. I think to myself that he may want to ask what he is helping with. But that is just me. My strong husband is in the stock room lifting boxes of t-shirts onto shelves. I need to remember to add “you look strong” the next time I need boxes moved around the house. I smile as I realize that I haven’t heard a word of grumbling from my strongman as he performs unpaid labor. Meanwhile, I keep shopping.
A few streets over we find the Skagway Museum. It is small, but interesting. I find a quilt made of duck feathers and other odd artifacts from life during the gold rush. Odder still is an elderly cruise ship passenger that is pitching a fit because the museum charges a four dollar entry fee. As I watch him walk out, I wonder what would possess a person to travel across the country, pay thousands of dollars for buffets and excursions and then yell at a little old lady from the historical society because they need $4.00 to keep the lights on. Someone needs to rethink their priorities.
Next door, I decide to visit the native garden. I want to visit because being a person of native heritage (distantly Cherokee), I think supporting indigenous people is important. And, I love gardens. My husband informs me that he will be sitting out front playing word games on his phone, because he does not love gardens.
I enter the center (it is a much larger indoor space than it looked from the outside) and find that I am the only human. I call “hello” and eventually a nice teenager appears and sells me a ticket and hands me a sculpture guide. She points to a back door and says have fun. I exit as directed and realize the outdoor space is much smaller than I expected.
The garden is beautiful and so are the sculptures. Honestly, I could walk the whole garden in three minutes. Reading the entire guide and taking photos of every sculpture (just to kill time) probably took less than 12 minutes. I just paid almost $15 to enter (the math suggests that I just paid over $1.00 an hour to smell flowers and take a photo with a bronze bear).
When my husband reads this, (and he always reads my blog to see what we have been up to….at least my version of what we have been up to) he is going to feel vindicated that he skipped it. It did feel a bit like a tourist trap, especially since is cheaper for us to go to our local botanical garden where you could spend a full day exploring hundreds of acres. But comparisons sometimes ruin the moment. I will remember standing alone among beautiful blooming native plants, hearing native melodies of flute and drum, watching bees buzz among the blooms, and the watchful eyes of bronze wildlife statues. Nature matters even if it is only a half acre. If my tourist dollar helps the native community instead of the cruise line, I am glad.
It is getting late and we still need to find dinner before the hotel entertains us with a mentalist (I guess time will tell what that is about). As we are walking and I am wondering what a mentalist’s show will consist of, a leg flies out of a window above us. The singing starts at about the same time. My husband is gawking at a woman in her “unmentionables” sitting in the window and showing her assets. What is it with this town? Let’s hope she also doesn’t think he is “strong”. At least the girl in the t-shirt shop was fully clothed.
As I keep walking, I notice that we are actually passing a theater. The ladies are actresses trying to drum up an audience for their evening show. I remind my guy that we already have entertainment plans and lure him along with the promise of dinner at the Skagway brewery. He has had enough surprises for one day.
As the day ends in Skagway, the town is once again peaceful. The shops are closed as we walk back to the hotel. It is quiet. I understand the attraction to life in the North Country. I wouldn’t want to be one of the hundreds of people who come just for the cruise season, and I don’t know how I could stand a winter without sun. So I will be content with a visit. I am glad that we get to experience Skagway after the cruise ships depart. It is a whole other world.
