No surprise, but Skagway is cloudy most all the time. It was cloudy when we arrived and blue sky on Tuesday and cloudy and windy yesterday and very cloudy and drizzly today. When you look up weather.com for Phoenix you see the same thing day in, day out: sun, sun, sun, sun with a hint of clouds, sun, sun, sun, sun. You know what to expect. The reverse side here is what you can expect. But that's ok. And it's very ok that it's still cool and windy because that keeps the state bird, the mosquito, down. But it's odd to bring up weather.com and realize we're not even on the national weather map. Right now it's 47F and light rain at 2:22 p.m. (that's 3:22 p.m. for those of you in Arizona). The 10-day reads: Showers, PM Showers, Light Rain, Showers, Showers, Showers, Scattered Showers, Partly Cloudy, Mostly Sunny, Mostly Cloudy.
We have a 60 page pdf file that we have to learn of information about the area. So, we spent a couple of hours studying this morning. You'd think 60 pages is nothing, but retaining all those dates is a challenge! It includes historical, geographical and current day knowledge. There are about 30 buildings that we have to know why they're there, where they might have been moved from, who used them first, what they're used for now, why they're important, etc. You would bore people all to hell if you told them all of that in a tour speech, but we still need to know it in case the people ask questions.
It's still a town awakening from winter as the stores get fresh coats of paint, the windows cleaned and boxes unpacked. We went for a hike up to Lower Dewey Lake yesterday and went as far as we cared to go until the snow patches got deeper than we cared to go. We learned that near Meeker in 2008 that you can hike through the woods and everything is clear...then a little patch of snow/ice...then a little more...and suddenly you're falling through the snow to hip level. But what a lovely hike with a bed of pine needles the whole way, old mining equipment rusting in the forest, hydroelectric pipelines, cold lakes, shouting/yelling/talking/murmuring streams. There were views of the town and a bit of the Lynn Canal. We met a group of young people with hiking poles carrying snowshoes who were going to Upper Dewey Lake.
Learned more about the food store, the hardware store, Radio Shack (which carries ice cream, candy, popcorn, soda and DVD's for rent), and a gift shop where you can restock your underwear. Seems like a few of the stores wear a couple of hats! It's beautiful here and I don't want to say that I'm bored, but I'm ready to get doing what I came here to do...to find my summer routine.
We have cable television in our room that comes gratis with our $6.50/person/day rate. Our first night here we watched the Northern 360 channel...an Alaskan access channel. On that channel we watched a rebroadcast of the February 2010 Wearable Art fashion show in Juneau. Many times the artists modeled their own creations on the catwalk. It held a definite fascination. The ball gown made of paint swatch chips won the People's Choice grand prize. You, too, can see what we saw:
And last night we watched "Avatar" on our notebook computer. Now if you've met our notebook computer, you'll know that the loudest audio is a whisper. We had a set of head phones that we split and we each took an earpiece and made it through just fine. Imagine "Avatar" on a wee screen. We really liked the movie and look forward to seeing it in 3-D someday.
Mike's out gold panning and throwing rocks in the creek while I'm blogging and avoiding balancing the checkbook. Some life things do still want to nag at us to get done even on a work-cation.
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