Whitehorse - Day 3

Thursday, August 26 - Dave and Mazie went off on their own Excellent Adventure today, they took a train/bus trip down to Skagway.  The bus left right from the RV park, and Marilyn volunteered to check on Ar'gent during the day, so off they went.  Joe and Collins had maintenance duties on our RV this morning, since Joe's part had come in yesterday.  They replaced our radiator reserve tank, whatever that is.  Once they finished that and got cleaned up, Marilyn and Collins headed into town to try to finish the tours they got rained out of yesterday, some museums and the Klondike sternwheeler.  So Joe and I headed off on our own adventure, down dirt roads to find lakes.

We have discovered a new treat in Canda - Tim Horton's.  Famous for coffee, but who cares about that.  His donuts are WONDERFUL.  So here's Joe, with this morning's little sinful treat.

We were trying to find the salmon fish hatchery, unsuccessfully as it turned out, but we did find some realy pretty lakes. This first lake is Chadburn Lake, and it was so clear you could hardly tell you were looking through water.

Then we stopped at Schwatka Lake, which is the lake above the dam.  They fly float planes from this lake.  Speaking of planes, the Whitehorse airport is pretty busy, and some big planes come in here.  Collins said they have direct flights from Europe into Whitehorse, and we saw several big jets fly over our campground.

The fall colors are starting to appear in this part of the country, in the flowers/weeds alongside the road as well as the trees.  There are lots of oranges, pinks and reds along the roads.

We stopped back at the fish ladder to get directions to the fish hatchery since we didn't find it down this road.  But we learned something new -- Chinook salmon are the same fish as king salmon (I'm sure John and Bridgette know this).  In the U.S., they are called kings, but in Canada they are called chinook (you know those Canadians, they always have to be different).  They told us a 40-lb. one had come through the ladder after we left yesterday.

So we headed out again, just north of town on Fish Lake Road.  We took a couple side roads just to explore, but drove to the end of this road where we found the lake.  Along the way, though, we came upon a different sign than we had seen before.

Although the sun didn't come out too often, and we kept getting sprinkled on, this was a beautiful drive.  The scenery would have been perfect pictures for jigsaw puzzles. 

Fall was always my favorite time of year in Indiana, so I really loved to see these colorful mountains.  Then, we didn't see a dogsled, but we did come upon a dog we had to stop for.

Then we got to Fish Lake.  We didn't see any fish in it, but it was another clear lake.  We drove partway around it, but the road kept deteriorating, so finally Joe turned around.

On our way back to civilization, we took another side road to Jackson Lake.  Here, I wasn't sure Joe was going to turn around, and our road went under water!

He did back us out of there, and we headed back to Whitehorse.  We got a nice view of the town on our way back in.

We found a fish farm (char fish) on this road, but still no fish hatchery.  Back in town, he wasn't ready to give up yet on that hatchery, so back across the Yukon bridge we went, and down one more side road, but all we found was Long Lake this time.

As we headed back to our campground, we stopped at the Beringia Center to get a picture of the woolly mammoths.  After all, you don't get to see statues of these very often.  In fact, we kept an eye out for woolly mammoths, as well as bear, moose, elk and caribou, on all our backroad drives today, but all we ever saw was a chipmunk.