Lately, we have been noticing a lot of these white flowers, that seem to sparkle in the sunlight, along the roadside, and wondered what they were. When we looked at them, it turned out that they were the white fluffy seeds of dandelions. When we thought about it, there were a LOT of yellow dandelions along the side of the roads earlier in our travels, so it only makes sense that they all would go to seed at the same time. The photo on the right is of some fireweed that has bloomed all the way to the top. Now the pink pods will mature and open up revealing seeds with whitish, feathery tails that will look like puffs of smoke. Then the leaves will turn red to make it look like “fire”. We have learned that fireweed is one of the first wildflowers to sprout following a forest fire. For that reason and its appearance, it got the name of fireweed.
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The Kluane National Park was off to our right as we continued southeast along the Alaska Highway. The mountains and glaciers began to appear more often, too. The glaciers are a part of the icefield range that is the largest non-polar icefield in North America.
Here are a couple views of the Kluane River. The first is hard to see, but it is a light line at the base of the mountains that is easier to see if you enlarge the picture. It winds around and into the area that is shown in the second photo.
We went through a town that had the world’s largest gold pan, Burwash Landing,YT.
The Kluane River flows into the Kluane Lake, the largest lake in the Yukon. Here are views from two different locations. The second area is called the Horseshoe Bay.
We drove on and suddenly the terrain changed to this interesting landscape. It is at the southern end of the Kluane National Park.
This area is where the Tachal Dhal Visitor Center is located. We stopped by and saw these Dall Sheep way up high on the mountain near where the green areas, in the middle of the photo, disappear. They could be seen with the naked eye as white dots that really stood out against the green and the brown dirt of the mountain. However, I had to zoom in all of the way to get these tiny images that look like some sort of a four legged animal standing and eating or lying down resting. We got out our spotting scope and could magnify them a little more to see better, but that didn’t help with the photography. It was very cool to see the Dall Sheep in the wild.
We arrived in Haines Junction and stayed at the Kluane RV Park. This certainly is Kluane country! We had another nice setting for our camp.
After we got settled, we took a drive through town and took some pictures of some of the unique points of interest in the town. The Village Monument is “the Muffin” or "the Animal Cupcake”. It depicts the relationship that the community has with the mountains and the wildlife.
There are two unique, historic churches in town. This is Our Lady of the Way Catholic Mission. It was built in 1954 by a catholic priest. Though resources were scarce, he was able to convert an old Quonset hut that the military had used during the building of the Alaska Highway. It has the distinction of being the most photographed church in the Yukon.
The other historic church is St. Christopher’s Anglican Church The original church was built right after the Alaska Highway was built. The current church was built in 1990 by volunteers and is unique because it is an eight-sided log cabin structure. It is a little difficult to detect that it has eight sides, through the foliage.
It was an interesting day.
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