A trip down the Klondike Highway

Working at a small-town newspaper comes with a few logistical inconveniences. For one, the newsroom is located above an Alaska-themed bookstore affiliated with the same company, making it confusing for some people trying to differentiate the two. (That the bookstore is called Skaguay News Depot doesn't help.)

A much larger-scale issue is the newsroom's lack of a newspaper printer. There would be no reason to expect a newspaper with a circulation of just less than 1,500 to have its own printer, and like many other small newspapers, The Skagway News gets printed in another town. In Skagway's case, the nearest land-accessible town with a printer is the Yukon capital of Whitehorse.

So for 30-something years, every two weeks, Skagway News editor Jeff Brady has made the 109-mile drive to the Whitehorse Star's newsroom, walks out with bundles of newspapers a few hours later and drives 109 miles back to Alaska. You can imagine what this is like in the winter.

Whitehorse has a population of about 26,000 and feels like downtown Manhattan compared to Skagway. It has movie theaters, Chinese food and a diversified economy, all things Skagway lacks. Everyone is excruciatingly nice. Drivers will let pedestrians cross at all costs. One time while waiting at a street corner, my coworker Katie pressed the traffic light button and the crossing signal instantly turned on. Coincidence, maybe, but I wouldn't be surprised if pedestrians had power over the traffic lights.

Yesterday I made the last of four trips to Whitehorse this summer, and as usual, the drive over was even more spectacular than the destination itself.

Little shop of mangos

When I was in Buenos Aires, one of my favorite pastimes was getting mistaken for an Argentine. Each time it happened felt like a small victory in every tourist's fight to not feel like a tourist.

Here in Skagway, there is one place where I can curiously experience the same feeling.

The place is Ports of Call, a quaint market and Internet cafe stocked with all sorts of international foods. I would estimate 95 percent of the patrons are foreign cruise passengers. The shelves are loaded with exotic foodstuffs like cassava chips, guava juice, instant chana masala and, weirdly, Ovalteen. Every culture is represented in a room the size of a living room, with heavy emphasis on Indian, Filipino and whichever culture eats prawn crackers.

Skagway's borderline mythical egg toss

The energy was electric. People buzzed in anticipation as the starting time of 1 p.m. drew closer. But it wasn't until Buckwheat walked to the middle of Broadway with a cart holding several hundred eggs that I recognized the magnitude of what was about to happen.

The date was July 4, and I was about to take part in the annual highlight of Skagway's Independence Day celebration: the egg toss.