A Beary Good Day – Haines to Whitehorse

We got off around 8:20 this morning, 40 minutes ahead of schedule.  Waved goodbye to Joyce, owner of Oceanside RV Park which we give full thumbs up to.  Joyce “MAKES” the park, she set the tone, is a very hard worker, good socializer, and you can tell that she loves her RV Park. 

Realizing that I had forgot to brush my teeth, take my high blood pressure pills, get the car information for the boarder crossing (yep, stopped again, but more on that later), we stop at the turn out for the eagle preserve and I take care of business.  Off we go, and soon the Chilkat River crosses to our right, and its largest tributary, the Klehini River, is alongside the road to our left..we are now at the northern most part of the Eagle Sanctuary.  The Klehini is the second largest gathering of eagles along an Alaska River in the winter months, and it is much more rocky than the Chilkat this time of year…it is truly a Glacier River.  As we drive along I glance out onto the rocky riverbed…and I see a bear.  I tell Marcia, who gets the camera ready, and I pull over.  As I take the camera and get a shot (top picture) I say, “See them, there are two of them…”  She replies, “No, there are three of them!”  Sure enough, there are three bears…a mama and two cubs.  The third cub is running a bit behind, and in the first picture you can see mama looking back…I have seen that look before, that cub is IN TROUBLE!

      

Finally it catches up, and they run off into the woods on the other side of the river.  Well, this is going to be a very beary day!   About 10 minutes later, we are at the border…and the bubble is burst again.

Above is a Google Maps picture of the Canadian Border.  We pull up, right where the white truck is above.  The kindest border guard comes out, she has a nice friendly smile, and gives me a friendly greeting, which I kindly return as I hand her our passports.  She asks about liquor, money and guns, and says she will be right back…goes to the back and gets our license plate, and vanishes inside.  After 5 minutes Marcia says, “I think she is calling the Canadian Mounted Police, and they are going to come and surround us!”   After another 5 minutes I wonder if Marcia might be right.  Before the next full five minutes go by, she comes out.

“Have you had troubles getting across the border before?”

“Yes,” I answer…”the first time was coming through in Idaho where they searched us.  Skagway wasn’t too bad, but in Beaver Creek the guy said that someone has the exact same name, but different birth date than mine.

“Not only is it the same name, but the birth date is only different by the month…the day and year are the same," she said.  "I am sorry, but you will face this each and every time you cross the border from now on.  I hope you understand, but we are just doing our job…” 

“I understand,” I said, “I did not know that the birth dates were that close…the guy in Beaver Creek just said it was a different birth date.”

“Well, I probably told you too much myself…but I felt you should know.”

After that the three of us talked about how the guards live right there along the border in Government housing.  She told us how she has been to Australia and to England…that she would like a family some day, but for now she is satisfied doing what she is doing, which allows travel each year.  We must have talked for another 10 minutes after she brought back our passports…and we would have talked longer but another motorhome finally showed up behind us.  For nearly 30 minutes we were the only vehicle crossing the border.  And now we know why it is so hard for us to pass through into Canada each time come to a Canadian border.

For the most part the rest of the trip was just fine.  Hit some heavy ground fog/clouds for a few miles, came across some wild Indians (actually it was a hostel), saw a few more Trumpeter Geese (no pictures though), and had a few more construction patches which were a piece of cake compared the real rough ones earlier on the trip…and we were in Whitehorse.  Went to the Vet to get some food for Skruffy, went into Walmart to get more insulin and needles for Skruffy, and over to the Canadian Superstore to stock up on food for the next 7-10 days before we will be near a “real” grocery store again.

     

Tonight we are back at the Pioneer RV Park, where for $160 Canadian I filled up our fuel tank ($140 before discount for staying in the park), and full hookups at the park.  We stayed here on our way to Alaska, and the lady who operates the park remembered me.  Tomorrow we head towards Watson Lake, but turn south on highway 37, the Cassiar Highway towards Hyder.  Most likely we will stay at the Baby Nugget RV Park like we did on the way…which had terrible Internet.  Not sure how much Internet we will have going down the Cassiar Highway…it does not look good.  If you don’t hear from us for a few days, that is why.