Whitehorse almost to Watson Lake

Friday, August 20.  Today is Collins' birthday, so we have some celebrating to do.  But first, Dave headed out early to the Chrysler dealer to get his Dodge serviced.  It turned out that he needed new front brakes (they were smoking coming into town on Tuesday), so we didn't get on the road until shortly after 12:00.  Mazie and I both got our laundry done this morning, then us three women ran into town to pick up some last minute groceries for tonight's big surprise birthday party (and some Tim Horton donut holes) before we hit the road.  David has a sore leg (he hit it on something the other day), but was able to go, and we made it 181 miles today, a little further than we had planned, but it just kept raining so we just kept driving.  We were trying to find some dry weather so David could cook the fish outside without needing an umbrella.

It had rained off and on all night, and most of the day today.  About 30 miles out of Whitehorse, we got back to the highway we had traveled on our way to Alaska, where Joe and I turned off to go down to Skagway.  We drove along Teslin Lake, the 86-mile long lake we saw back in June.  Today we didn't get very good views of it because of the weather, but I thought I probably needed one more picture.

We had some really nice mountain views today, but sometimes the fog/clouds almost completely hid them.  Occasionally, the sun would hit the top of a mountain and the fall colors would just explode on it.

But mostly it rained.  It was about 45 degrees, and once we had some snow or sleet hit the windshield.  We got parked about 4:30 just across the Continental Divide and began preparations for the big party.  David cooked up some of the halibut we caught in Homer, and some of the salmon Collins got in Hope.  David could teach the chefs in some of the restaurants in Alaska how to cook fish!  He does a great job.  I made potato salad (Eric, sorry you missed it), and Mazie made cole slaw and cornbread.  Marilyn made Banana Split Cake.  It was all delicious.  And quite a celebration.

 We finished the evening by playing cards.  They did let Collins win the first two hands (and he's mine and Mazie's partner), but it was downhill after that.  The other team beat us all three games.

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.

Whitehorse - Day 2

Wednesday, August 18 - We woke up to clouds again today, 50 degrees.  It rained off and on all day, and the city lost its power for a while (we didn't see any lightning, so don't know what happened).  We did several tours today.  The first one was next to the airport at the Transportation Museum, which featured the gold rush days.  They had a passenger train car, various kinds of stagecoaches, and lots of old vehicles from WWII.  Outside the museum is the "world's largest weather vane," an airplane (DC-3) mounted so perfectly on a pedestal that the slightest breeze causes it to swing around to point into the wind.  It faced different ways as we passed it during the course of the day, but we never actually say it moving.

Next we drove over to the Whitehorse Dam and Fish Ladder. This is the world's longest wooden fish ladder, and spawning salmon swim 1875 miles upriver to get back here.  Then, when they finally get here,  they still have to go up more than 15 metres (which Joe thinks is about 50 feet) of this fish ladder! Each step has a vertical baffle and a submerged opening, allowing the option of jumping over or swimming through.  Those salmon are just amazing.  They don't have a big salmon (chinook) run here, but we did get to see a few at the top of the ladder through their underwater viewing windows, and we got to watch them collect 3 (2 females and 1 male) to take to the fish hatchery.  The purpose of the fish hatchery was to compensate for the loss of downstream migrating chinook salmon fry as they passed through the turbines at the Whitehorse Rapids Generating Facility.  From the pictures of the generating facility and dam, you can see that this is the end of the road for the salmon trying to swim upstream.

They had a very interesting art display of the salmon, which I think was commemorating the 50th year of the generating station.  The first year the salmon art was provided by artists, but they opened it up the classrooms the second year.  Kaylee and Cody, we could do some of this.

(This next one is nails)

We actually got this tour in between raindrops mostly, then we stopped at the S.S. Klondike, another sternwheeler, but larger than the Keno we toured in Dawson City.  This one was completely open to tour, including the engine room and wheelhouse.

 

Joe thought he might check out the driving of this big boat, so here he is at the wheel.

But he didn't manage to get it into the water, so he waves bon voyage, and we head out to the Beringa Interpretive Centre. 

The mountains on the far side of the Yukon are very pretty, look like quilted puffs.  We are thinking about doing a riverboat cruise tomorrow, but hope for some sunshine. 

This Beringia museum is about the ice age, and the role this area (Beringia) played.  The placer miners have found a lot of ancient skeletons, bones, etc., up here when they dug up the land, especially when they dug below the permafrost, and woolly mammoths, scimitar-toothed cats, flat-faced bears, and many other prehistoric creatures roamed here from Russia, because there was land connection then.   Our gold panning consultant in Chicken, Thunder Jack, told us there were still woolly mammoths about 7 miles off the Top of the World Highway, and they even had some babies, but we really think he was living in another world anyhow.

Finally, we ended our tours for the day and headed off to the grocery store, always an event, especially in Canada where I can never figure out their pricing/measuring system.  I just pay whatever it says (and it says a lot!).  We stopped at the Ford dealer, and Joe's part for the RV came in, so that's a job for tomorrow now.  We got back to the RV and rested for a while, because we still had another event on today's agenda.  The Frantic Follies, a vaudeville-type show that started at 8:30.

The show was very entertaining, a mixture of cancan dancing, singing, jokes and skits, very well done.  But it kept us out past our bedtime.  We got back from that about 10:30 or so, a really full day in Whitehorse.

Whitehorse - Day 1

Tuesday, August 17 - We got an early start this morning and headed toward Whitehorse.  Right out of our (very nice) campground was a photo op for the Five Finger Rapids on the Yukon.  We had seen pictures of this when we toured the Keno sternwheeler in Dawson City, a tough river navigation area.  Very pretty, though.

I even got Collins out of that driver's seat and up to the observation deck to see this view!

Actually, all 6 of us got out for this.  As we drove on, we passed lots of mountains, creeks and rivers.  We went through a wetlands area that is part of the Nordenskiold River system and is an important part of the migration route for many waterfowl, including trumpeter and tundra swans and ruddy ducks (whatever they are).  There were supposed to be beaver, muskrat, moose, mink and fox in the area, but of course we saw nothing.  Oh, I take that back.  Collins saw a dead black bear cub along the side of the road, but the rest of us didn't even see that.

It was all very pretty, with little ponds and marshes, and I probably will have a crick in my neck tonight from looking for moose, to no avail!  There really should have been at least one moose in one of these ponds.

We are now in elk country too.  David thought he heard a moose bugling about 3:00 a.m., somewhere around the campground, but it could have been elk.  It also could have been David dreaming again.  He had one wild dream a while back about bears coming into the camper and him trying to shove them out with the broom.  It's possible that he's dreaming about moose now.

Nevertheless, there is a herd of about 50 elk who live here year-round.  We went through some elk hunting areas, and some "buffer areas" (whatever that means). 

Our target this morning was to make the Braeburn Lodge, with "world famous cinamon buns," because we had planned our breakfast intake around this treat.  We got there about 10:30, and they were huge.  We split one amongst the six of us!

As we got nearer to Whitehorse, we started seeing some really nice lakes.  The area around the first one, Little Fox Lake, was part of a forest fire in 1998, and the burn-out was still very evident.

Fishing is supposed to be good near the islands, and it had lots of islands.  This was a pretty good-sized lake, but then we next came to Fox Lake (as opposed to Little Fox Lake), and it went on for miles.  It is probably 3-4 times the size of Roosevelt Lake, at least, and had a very pretty shoreline. 

The leaves are just beginning to turn up here, and the mountainsides were lovely with different shades of browns, greens, yellows and oranges.  I'm sure my picture doesn't begin to capture that beauty because it was too far away, but even along side the road were pretty flowering plants (weeds).

Just before we got to the intersection of the Alaska Highway (we are now leaving the Yukon Highway), we crossed the Takhini River, a beautiful emerald-covered river.  There's a Takhini Hot Springs here, about 6 miles out of town, so we may need to soak in that before we leave this area.

We got into a campground here, then Joe and I headed into town to the Ford dealer to order a part for the RV (it is supposed to be in tomorrow around 4:00 from Edmonton).  Collins found what he needed for his water heater, so he got that running, and David has a service appointment for his truck for Friday.  Joe and I drove through town a little bit, it a very nice town, and stopped at a Mexican restaurant for lunch.  They DO NOT know how to fix Mexican food up here.  It was not very good.  So back to cooking in the RV for dinner, I guess.  We have lots of things to do here, so we should be busy for the next few days.  But we do have internet and phone service again, so we can be in touch with the outside world from here.