We had a shorter day of driving today, but it was a great day for seeing animals. We saw this bear with a brown bear. I couldn’t get a good picture of the brown one because he walked back into the woods. There also was a buffalo/bison nearby. I guess they get along because they each were just munching away on the grass and not paying attention to anyone else..
This bear was very close to the road,but it took awhile for him to stop eating long enough for me to get this picture with his head up.
These buffalo/bison were in the grass area next to the road. The second buffalo/bison's face looks very furry, fuzzy to me. I wonder if he might be a different variety of the animal. We saw many more bears and bison during our travels today, but there are only so many pictures that I can put in the blog or store in the computer
. This is the Liard River in British Columbia. Looking upstream, in the first picture, you can see Goat Mountain. Downstream looks pretty much the same. Note the black clouds in the distance. There were rain showers off and on during the day.
These wildflowers were down over the hill, towards the river, from where I was standing to take the photos.
The sign for today is a warning to motorcyclist to be careful of loose gravel.
Grandma and Bumble are standing by the Sign that lets us know we are now in Yukon Territories. Then, we arrived in Watson Lake, YT. They had many international flags along both sides of the main street, the Alaska Highway.
Today is the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. We took advantage of the extra sunlight to do some sight seeing and partake in a tourist activity that has become a tradition for many, many folks who travel through Watson Lake, YT on their way to Alaska. In 1942, a service man, who was working on the Alaska Highway, became homesick, so he put up a sign telling how far it was to his home town. More mile posts were added by other service members indicating were their home towns were. Since then, the tradition was taken up by travelers who use the Alaska Highway. As you can see, there are thousands and thousands of signs posted at the Sign Post Forest, 78, 000+ as of September of last year. Here are Earl, Bumble and I with the sign we will be adding to the multitude.
First, Bumble and I had to find a place to put our sign. Then Bumble helped Grandpa attach the sign.
Here is how the sign looks among the other signs. Bumble and Grandpa each are having a “Vanna” moment. You can get an idea of the variety of things people bring to mark their voyage to the great Northwest.
Some people go to the extreme with planning what they will put up as their addition to the forest. As we walked among the “trees”, some caught our eyes. There were pie pans with punched in names and cities, everything from simple wood slabs marked with magic marker to photo plaques, to street and city signs and all nationalities are represented. These two stood out to me, one for the last name of the family and the other for the town where the people were from, as well as how much each family had planned for this activity by making a hand painted or a photo sign. It is sort of a rite of passage along the Alaska Highway. These make our sign look so plain.
There are so many signs posted in the Sign Post Forest, that it would take forever to look at each one, but it was very interesting to see the ones that we did see. There was a visitor center next to the Sign Post Forest, so we watched their movie about the building of the Alaska Highway and got some more info about the areas we will encounter on our way to Alaska. We had dinner back at the trailer then went across the street to the Northern Lights Center to see that presentation. It was a planetarium movie in two parts. The first part was a scientific explanation of the latest information on black holes is. The second part was a compilation of videos that were taken of the Aurora Borealis and what causes it to form. Both were very interesting. The show was finished at 9:30 PM and the sun was still pretty high in the sky.
Like I said, it is the summer solstice today, so I thought I would show you how bright it is at night here. Now we are in Watson Lake, YT, which is just north of British Columbia, so we are not where the sun stays in the sky all night. We will be going much further north in the next week or two, so that may happen later in our trip. The first photo was taken at 11:00 PM and the second was taken at 11:45 PM, looking out of our trailer door over top of the RV next to us. These were taken solely with ambient light, no flash nor sunset or nighttime setting on the camera. The sun goes down, but it never gets dark all night. We have prepared our bedroom so that it stays pretty dark and we are not bothered when the sun rises around 4:00 – 4:30 AM.
Good night, even though it is still light outside.
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