DAY 27 – 33 ~ THE YUKON

We will be spending 8 days exploring the Yukon.

After an overnight stay in Watson Lake we will be heading west and along the border of British Columbia and The Yukon and then turn north to Whitehorse.  This is where we leave the Alaska Highway and continue north through Carmacks.  After a few days in Dawson City, we take a ferry over the Yukon River onto “The Top of the World” highway that takes us into Alaska.  This part will be an adventure because The Top of the World highway is a narrow, winding, middle of nowhere, dirt and gravel road.

  

DAY 27 ~ WATSON LAKE

Traveling along the Alaska Highway we saw more wildlife.  Herds of Bison with some young ones, and black bears (3 of them).  And a couple of Stone Sheep out on the road.  Of course the scenery is always spectacular on the Alaska Highway.

After 217 miles and 5 hours we arrived at Baby Nugget RV Park.  This is an okay RV park about 12 miles outside of Watson Lake.  The only decent place we could find.  It had a gift shop and a small café on the property.  The food was okay.  This will be an overnight stay.

Watson Lake is famous for its Sign Post Forest.  This place is pretty spectacular.  People from all over the world stop here and leave a city sign from their hometown.  We found San Rafael and Petaluma.  One day we will stop here and leave a sign from Cotati.  I don’t know where people get these signs because they are actual city signs.  Maybe they stole them.

The forest was started in 1942 by a homesick U.S. Army GI who was working on the Alaska Highway.  He erected a sign pointing the way and stating the mileage to his hometown. The forest now covers several acres and it keeps growing.  In 1988 there were 6,281 signs.  In 2016 there were 83,886.

  

Across the street from the Sign Post Forest was the Northern Lights Centre.  We saw a planetarium like show there about the northern lights. I almost fell asleep, but the show was very informative. 

DAY 28-31 ~ WHITEHORSE

We saw more wildlife on our way to Whitehorse. Two black bears on a slope alongside of the highway. Except one of them was brown.  You will notice some words in stone on the hill.  We’ve seen this in several places along the highway in British Columbia and now in the Yukon.  People will gather stones and form their names on the hillside.  Hope they are keeping a lookout for bears.

Whitehorse is the capital of The Yukon.  It’s a fairly big city.  After 254 miles and 6 hours we arrived at Hi Valley RV Park. We’ve stayed at this park a few times before and it was always a good stay.  We had a nice site in the back of the park in the woods, away from the highway noise.  Not this time.  We are in front, within view of the office and next to the RV car wash.  In the afternoon all the Alaska RV traffic makes an overnight stop at this place.  Those coming from Alaska immediately stop at the car wash to wash off all that Alaska dirt and dust. 

So, it is not a comfortable stay for us.  Lots of noise from the car wash and noise for the highway all day.  And we are near an airport right in the flight path.  That goes on all day as well.  Never noticed all this noise when we were in the back of the park.  And the park is full so no changing sites.  Aside from all that it is still a nice RV, except for the noise and only 30 minutes a day of free weak WiFi for each device.  But the showers are free.

  

We are staying in Whitehorse for 4 days.  This is a large city with lots of nice restaurant and shops.  Whitehorse is the birthplace of a famous poem by British Canadian poet Robert Service. The poems of "Shooting of Dan McGrew" and the "Cremation of Sam McGee". The poems were about the Yukon gold rush in 1898. The Cremation of Sam McGee was a story he heard in a bar.  He went home and turned it into a poem, so this story might be true.  San McGee was a real person. This poem is also widely read in Canadian elementary schools.  Look it up in Google.

  

  

During our stay in Whitehorse, we will get our SUV serviced, do laundry, grocery shopping; not too much though because the US border is very strict with what we can bring in.  We have to also drink up a big supply of our wine while in The Yukon. At the border, US might confiscate it, even though it was all bought in the US.  Canada let us bring in our two cases, even though there is a 2 liter per person rule.  Dave needs to get a haircut and I need a hair color. What else… oh we need to wash the SUV… before we go into Alaska??  Ask Dave.

    

We made a stop at Walmart and bought paint supplies.  Ever since I found that painted rock in Dawson Creek, I’ve been collecting nice round, flat rocks in British Columbia and now in The Yukon.  Yeah, I’m going to paint them.  I’ve got the bug.  I’m painting traveling turtles on all of them and will be hiding my first batch in Alaska.  I’ll be hiding some at home too.  I’ve started a group on Facebook; “Traveling Turtles Peace Rocks”.  People who find my rocks will post pictures, where they were found and re-hide them…I am hoping.

  

After all the chores were done we visited a few sights in Whitehorse.  The Yukon Beringia Centre is like a natural history museum.  Lots of interesting stuff; fossils, life size skeletal remains of a woolly mammoth, and first peoples exhibits. 

Next door to the Beringia is the Transportation Museum.  We did not visit it, but thought this airplane weathervane was interesting.  The wind will move in a circular direction.

  

This very small art gallery, The Yukon Art Centre and Gallery, was showing only one artist.  Her art work is beautiful.

On the last day of our stay in Whitehorse, we did a day trip to Skagway, Alaska.  Its about a 100 mile drive along the South Klondike Highway from Whitehorse to Skagway.  It’s beautiful scenery along the way.  This route takes you back into British Columbia and then into Alaska.

Saw a lone black bear (actually brown) eating the yellow flowers on the road side. 

Those bears sure love eating those yellow flowers.

We made a stop in Carcross (originally called Caribou Crossing).  Mathew Watson General Store is the oldest operating store in The Yukon.  Since the gold rush days in the early 1900's.  The inside of the store looks the same as it did over 100 years ago.  Different merchandise, of course.

A must see in Carcross is the Carcross Desert, the smallest desert in the world.  650 acres of sand was created by retreating glaciers leaving a sandy lake bottom. 

One more stop before Skagway was Tutusi Lake.  Views of this lake are beautiful.

There were two cruise ships docked at Skagway, so this one street town was very crowded and busy.  The shops had nice merchandise, not your tourist crap stuff.  But each shop had a lot of the same stuff.  The are lots of jewelry shops too, selling the same “gemstone stuff that can only be found here”.  Saw the same stuff in the Caribbean.  

 There are not too many places to eat.  Everyone eats on their own ship.  The one famous place, The Red Onion (once a bordello) was packed.  We didn’t have to wait very long.  Our server had on a very tight bodice and kept calling us darling and sweetheart.  We had time to eat and do a little shopping.

 We made reservations to ride the White Pass train from Skagway to White Pass Summit (20.4 miles and into British Columbia) and back.  More beautiful scenery.

US & British Columbia border 

Interesting boulder at the train depot.  I see a frog 

When we returned to Skagway around 5pm.  Most of the shops were closed or closing. Everyone was heading back to the cruise ships, and we headed back to Whitehorse.

  

We saw more black bears on our way back, again one was brown.  Maybe they are the same two we saw on the way to Skagway. This time they were on the road eating the yellow flowers at the road edge.  We got up close and personal.

Tomorrow we leave Whitehorse and make an overnight stop at Carmacks.

DAY 32 ~ CARMACKS

At Whitehorse we leave the Alaska Highway and travel north onto the Klondike Highway to Dawson City.  We make an overnight stay in Camacks.  Camacks is not really a town, it’s just a trading post and service stations on the side of the road.  It has a motel, general store, gas pumps and a dump of an RV Park.  A lot of the so called towns along the Alaska Highway are like this. 

After 113 miles and 3 hours we arrive at Carmacks Hotel and RV Park.  This is a small RV park with about 20 spaces.  We were the only ones there when we set up, but later 4 other RV’s showed up.  That made me feel a bit more comfortable.  We have a rule that if we are the only one in the RV park, there is a reason, so leave.  Across the street is a nice view of the Yukon River.  The only good thing about this park is that the Wifi is fast and has a strong signal.  There is no TV at all and the comfort station is one room with washers/dryers and 5 doors leading to 3 private showers and 2 toilets, for all genders.

The general store is something to see on this property.  A large building with a 1^st level and basement full of everything; groceries, pharmacy, hardware, gifts, home décor, holiday gifts.  Very impressive.

We did unhook the car and drove a few miles north on the Klondike highway to view the Five Fingers Rapids.  These rapids on the Yukon river caused a lot of problems during the gold rush days and even today.  The rapids were an obstruction in navigation for all river boats going up the river as well as down the river.  The riverboats had to be winched (pulled on a cable) to go up the rapids.  And going down the rapids, they had to use skill to fit through the fingers and find the right place to ride the rapids.  In the gold rush days, gold seekers on rafts and boats and riverboat captains had no skills in riding rapids.

DAY 33-34 ~ DAWSON CITY

During the gold rush days in 1896, the only way to get into this city was to sail to Skagway, climb the Chilkoot Trail over White Pass into Whitehorse and 400 miles down the Yukon river to Dawson.  Remember those pictures of a trail of men climbing a snow-covered mountain?  They are all heading to Dawson City where all the gold is.  In those days Dawson City had a population of around 40,000.  Today it is around 1,375 and there is still gold mining going on.

This is our last stop in The Yukon.  We are in Dawson City for two days.

After 216 miles and 6 hours we arrive at Bonanza Gold Motel and RV Park.  Another dump.  A large dirt parking lot behind a run down motel where the sites are too close together.  There was free WiFi, but no signal.  Some of these RV parks advertise free Wifi, but they only install one tower for 100’s of devices.  But at least they can advertise free WiFi.

In Dawson City, a lot of the buildings from the gold rush days are still standing.  They are shops, restaurants and hotels.  Any new buildings are designed the same way.  It is a truly an ‘old west’ town… and full of tourists.  Bus loads of them.  Everyone walking around town have name tags on.  

 Watch that last step, it's a doozy!

We spent some time wandering the town and checking out the stores.  We visited the Dawson City Museum and Jack London’s cabin which was moved from its original site outside of Dawson City.  Jack’s short time as a gold miner inspired his stories “Call of the Wild” and “White Fang”, and many short stories like “To Build a Fire”.

Outside of Dawson City is the Dempster Highway; is a 400+ mile dirt road north through Tombstone Park, low hills and alpine tundra to Inuvik in the Northwest Territories.  Another 90 miles takes you to the Arctic Ocean. 

 We only drove about 50 miles of it to the Tombstone Interpretive Centre.  Then we turned back and headed for 'home'.  Traveling this road all the way to the to the Arctic Ocean is about 400 miles.  That's for another day.  It is on our bucket list. 

Tomorrow we end our journey through Canada and start our adventure in Alaska!