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.

Somehow, in Canucks country

Last night I was walking by a bar that was nearly overflowing with people. They were all watching Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals between the Vancouver Canucks and the Boston Bruins. Many of them were wearing Canucks jerseys and cheering, providing an atmosphere quite different from the night before, when the bar was practically empty as I watched the NBA finals.

It eventually clicked that many of the fans were probably from the Vancouver area and were passengers on one of the many Vancouver-to-Alaska cruises that come to Skagway each day. However, they wouldn't have had to go too far to find local Canucks fans.