July 15: Drive to Whitehorse, Yukon
Bob: Making a hasty exit from the swarms of mosquitoes in our campground just outside Watson Lake, we meandered westward through the Canadian Rockies to Whitehorse, the "big city" of the Yukon. We passed both herds of buffalo and a female black bear with two cute cubs along the way. The scenery was fabulous and mountains were never completely out of sight as the road ran down broad mountain valleys, across mountain passes, and occasionally traversed mountain gorges. Snow is still atop some of the peaks, but the valleys are lush and green. Very, very few people, and we did not see any sign of human habitation, much less a town, for 50 kilometer stretches. Traffic is very sparse; we often didn't see a car in our lane for an hour or so although oncoming traffic occurred every few minutes. Amazingly, a few people are riding bicycles through this area--not sure how they got up here, but if they rode all the way I think it would take weeks! |
Monika: We had a quick breakfast and packed up wearing our mosquito jackets. That had kept the beasties from most of me, but they did munch on my ankles. Oh well, I have to remember spraying repellant to discourage them. We saw a mama bear with two cubs by the roadside and then ambling up the embankment when we slowed down to take pictures. We finally crossed the continental divide but there was only a rest area was some informational signs. No big official sign. But Spatz and Muschi had their picture taken on the unofficial sign, which was just a stack of logs shaped roughly like a double arrow. |
Bob: The advantage of a driving tour is the ability to stop and look at the unexpected interesting things you see along the way. The guide to camping in Alaska just listed highlights along the AlCan highway, but one that intrigued us was the Tlingit cultural center just West of the town of Teslin on Teslin Lake. I always try to understand the culture of the places we visit, and the Native American culture is a key part of the cultural mosaic of Alaska and the Yukon, so we decided to stop. The cultural center was the combination of a small but excellently-labeled set of museum exhibits, a large meeting space, a small but high-quality gift shop, and a movie room, all focused on the woodland Tlingit, a branch of the coastal Tlingit Indians who had moved inland and kind of culturally merged with the woodland tribes up in the valleys and mountains of the Yukon. We viewed a truly well-done historical film of the Year of Two Winters, which was crucial in the history of the tribe. One year several hundred years back, the summer turned into winter (probably when a large volcano in the Pacific erupted and blocked the sun in the Northwest). Without sunlight, the usual gathering crops failed and ultimately the animals also left the area, so the hunter-gatherers were completely bereft of food. Apparently some of the tribe survived by heading for the coastal area and then returning the next year. But one branch of the tribe apparently took a desperate gamble and headed inland and southward to find food, ultimately descending the entire chain of the Rocky Mountains! That branch became the Navajo of the American Southwest and ended up in today's Arizona and New Mexico region, where they contended with the Ancient Puebloans and finally settled down permanently. This epic tribal migration is confirmed by the linguistic commonalities between the woodland Tlingit and Navajo languages. THAT finally explained the mystery of where the Navajo came from to invade the Southwest, which had bothered me for years! We spent the remainder of the afternoon driving to Whitehorse, but when we finally arrived around 6 p.m., our first choice for a nice public campground was already completely filled. Using our guide, we backtracked just to the East of the city where we found a private campground that still had one tiny, potholed campsite that would just barely fit our car and tent. We were too tired to search further, so we crammed our tent and car into the space and set up for the night. Since our guide listed several things to see in Whitehorse, we decided to stay two nights so that we could have a full day of taking in the sights. |
Monika: We descended into the town of Teslin on Teslin Lake after crossing a beautiful bridge. We had a rather good lunch and then went on to the Tlingit cultural center about which we had heard. They had a rather evocative movie done by one of the Tlingit people. The exhibits gave a good overview of the history and culture of this native North American tribe, and they were all carefully labeled with nice short explanations of everything you saw. We got into Whitehorse later than expected and the first campground we tried did not have a space for our tent/car combination. But we did get a space at the next one. We set up tent and car and enjoyed the luxury of real bathrooms. Dinner was mashed potatoes with chicken. Quite yummy. But we were too tired to go into town, so we just had a fire, read, and relaxed. We wanted to take a day off to see the riverboat SS Klondike and take a cruise on the Yukon River, and do some shopping, so we signed up for 2 nights at the campground. |
July 16: Whitehorse, Yukon
Bob: We had a wonderful time in Whitehorse where we started out driving along the lake formed by the Yukon river just outside of Whitehorse. We had originally wanted to take a cruise on the lake and river, but that excursion business was apparently bankrupt although we saw the pretty little excursion boat sitting up on blocks on the shoreline, a rather forlorn sight. The wide flat river was, it turned out, also used as an airport as it was a great place for float planes to land. About 6 such airplanes were moored along the shoreline, and every now and then we would see or hear one taking off from the river. |
Monika: The strangest bus had parked in one of the pull-throughs. At night it had sleeping accommodations for its passengers in a pull out section, during the day it was a bus. Of course, it was a bunch of Germans on a sightseeing trip to Alaska! Unfortunately, the Yukon River cruise company was out of business although the small excursion boat used for the tours was still there , high and dry, behind a For Sale sign. Sigh, too bad! But there were plenty of float planes to take pictures of. |
Bob: We hiked a bit up the Yukon River to the site of a Klondike Gold Rush boom town of Canyon City. The town's sole reason to exist was a log-railed tramway that transported the Gold Rush stampeders from the Chilkut Pass past the treacherous narrows and rapids of the upper Yukon to Whitehorse, where they could catch a steamer down the Yukon to Dawson City and the gold fields. When the Gold Rush subsided three years later, the town died and most of the buildings were dismantled and moved elsewhere. Some rusty old food cans and a beautiful view of the River gorge are all that remain. |
Monika: A friendly local told us about a free guided hike to the old town of Canyon City just up the Yukon River from Whitehorse, so we did that walk from 10-12. It was guided by two young women who stopped every few minutes to describe what we were seeing or tell about the history, and we had a lot of fun. Canyon City had only existed for three years to help the stampeders get past the rapids in the Yukon and on their way to the Dawson Creek gold fields. The main business in town was a tram line that bypassed the rapids, and two reconstructed carriages were on the site. |
Bob: After lunch, we toured the SS Klondike , the last example of over 200 steamships that once plied the Yukon and connected rivers. The ship was built on what I would call a Mississippi steamship pattern with a very shallow 4-foot draft, stern paddle wheel, high pressure boiler on the main deck, and a smaller second deck for passengers plus the wheelhouse on top like a wedding cake. The ship was right out of the pages of Mark Twain's "Life On The Mississippi"! The restored and preserved ship was complete with 1930s era goods on each of the decks as the 1930s was the last period the SS Klondike actually operated as a freight and passenger transport on the Yukon. The restoration felt very authentic and we could scramble around most of the public areas and peer into the cabins and salons. The dinning room and first-class passenger salon at the front of the second deck was both surprisingly luxurious and the bow windows at the front of the salon afforded a wonderful view out over the River. So if you wander to the Yukon, we would recommend seeing the SS Klondike. |
Monika: Returning to downtown Whitehorse, we had lunch at Tim Horton's and then toured the SS Klondike, the last of the old river steamers that has been preserved as a museum in dry dock. We opted for the self-guided tour and spent a nice hour scrambling around its decks and looking at the exhibits. Very interesting. The Klondike was last used in the 1930s to ship silver ore up the Yukon to Whitehorse, and then again in after WW II as an excursion boat. Then went shopping and found some things like glue, a small spatula, bread, cheese, milk, beef jerky and peanut butter, but NOT fuel for the stove, a half-dozen eggs or squeezable jam. It's odd what you can and cannot find as you travel in foreign countries, even ones as similar to the U.S.A. in culture as Canada is! |
