Today’s journey is through a lot of “boring” terrain, if you can call any of this boring! It’s a heavy gravel road with steep dips. We actually passed a camper – and we were doing 25 mph!
Down the road, we saw a wolf – or was it? Our observations of what we saw were really interesting. I thought it loped, John thought it trotted. We differed on how big it was, and whether the tail was white tipped. We alternated between wolf and fox – and ruled out coyote. We saw a picture of a fox at a roadside kiosk and agreed it was probably a fox!
One bizarre thing I swear we saw! A black rooster with a red comb, standing right by the road. We both agreed on its appearance, but kind of dismissed the sighting as too weird!
At last we reach the intersection of the Alaska Highway and the Cassiar (37) and arrive at the junction with the Alaska Highway.
This seems a whole other ballgame! The road is still two lanes, but now the vistas are of huge mountain ranges once again, and trees that seem to all be the same heights, punctuated by a cut through them that is the highway.
We are following the Rancheria River. It was named by miners from California or Mexico. We stop at the Rancheria Falls and Nacho has his picture taken there. John talks to a German man in a rented camper. He says he came from Vancouver and got a good deal on the camper, which he will turn in at Whitehorse. The company wants all of these campers in Whitehorse, because people fly in and pick them up to continue to Alaska. Here we will cross the British Columbia-Yukon Territory borders several times.
John spots a grizzly with two babies – he says they were this years cubs. We cross the bridge at Teslin – it comes up really fast. We are looking for the campground – but it seems we may have passed it until we realize that the lake is 92 miles long. We had planned to go back into Teslin to look at some things like the Tlingit Museum, but we are too far out of town.
During the late evening, the sky clouds up and we have –HAIL! Not much, but it sounds loud on the camper. It made the sky so beautiful though.
John spotted an eagle flying above him – he actually heard its wings – it’s so quiet out here.
I spotted a ruffled grouse. Can you see him in the picture? He is almost dead center.
More beautiful vistas the next day. The Alaska Highway is another one of those feats that you wonder about! We all know it as the Alcan Highway. That was the military name, but the Alaskans didn’t like it and the name officially became the Alaska Highway in 1943. In February of 1942, Roosevelt wanted the highway built to carry supplies to Alaska to support the WWII effort. 10,000 men were immediately sent to the area, and between June and November, they built 1200 miles of highway –8 months and 12 days after the start. Much of it followed old trails, but a lot was uncharted territory. A man would go out with a stick with a colored piece of cloth on it. When he reached the point where he couldn’t be seen anymore, he would plant it and another man would take the next flag further on. They faced hot weather, mosquitoes, cold weather, lack of food and equipment. The Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands in June of 42, which spurred on the quest to get the highway done. Canada allowed the road to be built in exchange for rights to it after the war. Many of the men who built the road then went on to the theater of war. The road opened to the public in 1948. One man wrote a poem about building it that sums it up. You’ll find it on a separate blog posting.
We stopped at noon outside of Whitehorse at the Caribou RV Park. We really felt like we were in a foreign country – only Germany! The place is run and owned by Swiss, and they cater to the German tourists. In fact, we may have been the only gringos ( is that the right word in this case?) in the place. I spoke with a nice young woman running the office. She had broken up with her boyfriend of 17 years, and decided to answer an ad to work here. She is also Swiss. At night, the sounds of German oom-pa-pa music came from the house behind the office! No English spoken here during the day!
We spent the whole day doing laundry, washing the camper, cleaning out the inside, and getting ready for the next part of the trip. They had Internet here, but in the laundry room, and during the evening, they had a power surge, which knocked everything out. It continues to be frustrating to write the blog, get email, and generally catch up with things.
There was a little cabin on the property called Joe’s Cabin, with a soulful tale of Joe, who lived alone and eventually had a dog. His one desire was to be by himself. Then he disappeared and the cabin was abandoned. The cabin is almost like a German beer hall – tables set up with plenty of ashtrays. There were old miners things on display, including a tin of Dixie plug tobacco!
Beautiful alpine lupine is everywhere!
The next morning we went into Whitehorse, population 24,000. That is 2/3 of the population of the entire Yukon Territory! It is really a nice little town with lots of tourist stuff to do. We will be back through here on our trip, so decided not to spend the time right now.
However, we made a change in our plans and have decided to take the side trip to Skagway.
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