Monday, Day 52 of our summer trip.
We spent yesterday cleaning inside the trailer, doing laundry and we washed the truck. While I was doing laundry, some new people arrived at the campground and parked next to us. They noticed our geocaching trackable travel bugs on the truck and trailer. They also geocache and have a similar travel bug. Well, Earl and the man talked quite a bit. While they were talking, Earl mentioned that there were a couple geocaches in the Sign Post Forest. We had planned to go there after we finished all of our chores. He said that he already knew about them from a part of the geocaching program that lets you plot a course and the geocaching website will list all of the geocaches within 5 miles of your route. Earl said he had heard of that, but hadn’t been able to get it to work, so the man took us into his motorhome to show us what to do. Later in the afternoon. the Fantasy Tours Caravan folks started to pull in. They had been in Watson Lake at the same RV park where we were staying while we were there. One of the caravan members was parked on the other side of us. He let us know that one of the caravan members had travel bugs, too. Earl got in touch with that person and they exchanged geocaching numbers. So, by the time we found the two at the Sign Post Forest, we had gotten 5 new caches recorded.
Today, we are on our way to Whitehorse, YT.Once we get there, we will find out what the road out of Dawson City is like and decide which way we want to go to get into Alaska. It started to rain during the night and has continued to rain off and on. We were traveling along and started seeing all of these names and words, written out with white rocks, along the side of the road. It reminded me of when we go across the Salt Flats in Utah. People write words with dark rocks there. I read in one of the descriptions that this is called rock art in these parts.
Guess what. We were stopped by another construction zone on the way to Whitehorse today. There was a long 20 minute wait that turned into about 40 min. Then we got to follow the pilot car for another 20 minutes or so VERY SLOWLY through the construction zone. I took a picture of the line of RVs and others who were waiting for our turn to be lead through the construction zone.. The pilot car finally got to us so we could creep along behind him.
We passed all of the trucks filled with gravel, then saw what was happening. What they were doing here was putting down a really heavy layer of tar then topping it with gravel. Dusty dirty gravel which turned into mud where it was raining. So much for having washed the truck yesterday. By the time we got to the end of the construction and we were allowed to drive on our own without the pilot, that cleanliness was all gone. At least it was only one layer now instead of the many layers before the washing.
We saw some pretty scenery as we traveled through the Yukon, but no big animals today.
This is the Nisutlin Bridge where it crosses the Nisutlin River and into Teslin, YT. It is the longest expanse for a bridge over water on the Alaska highway. It has a grate decking and is 1917 ft. long.
Here is where we camped at the Pioneer RV Park in Whitehorse, YT You can see how much dirt got onto the truck. Even more is on the trailer which hasn’t been washed at all, yet. This is a very nice site, wide, deep and a nice buffer of trees between the sites. They had a lot of amenities, including a gas/diesel station and propane for sale.
It was almost 9:30 PM when we got to camp, so we just set up, ate dinner and relaxed before bed time. See how light the sky is? It stays light all night. Even though the sun has officially set, there is always an after sunset or dawn type of twilight all night.
We will explore Whitehorse during the next two days.
Saturday, Day 50 of our summer trip. Summer Solstice
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
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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.
