Finally Finished Alaska Highway – to Watson Lake, Yukon Territory

What?  I thought you have been in Alaska now for 2 months…what do you mean “Finally Finished the Alaska Highway”?   Well, back two months ago when we went to Skagway, we cut corners…going from Jakes Corner (where the “B” is on map) over to to Carcross and then on to Skagway.  Upon our return, we went from Carcross up to Whitehorse.  So technically, we missed about 40 miles of the Alaska Highway…but today, on our trip from Whitehorse to Watson Lake, we finished those 40 miles, as represented by the red travel line in the map.

    

Essentially we missed Marsh Lake, and a few scenic mountains. The road was in good condition…in fact, there was only a small area of construction which was not very bumpy.  We decided to stay at Baby Nugget RV Park just west of Watson Lake, and we lucked out by getting the closest site nearest the office…which means we have access from our site to their Internet.  Last time we were a couple of sites away, and my post did not include pictures due to the slowness of the connection.  Today the connection is good, and we have had no problems with the Internet.

    

The rest of our journey to the RV Park was covering “old ground”, such as crossing the Teslin River near Johnsons Crossing (top above), and driving along Teslin Lake (left and right above)…the good thing is that the construction along the lake was finished, except that they were working on the bridge near the town of Teslin, so it was one lane, 10 mph when you did go over it.  That only caused us a 5 minute delay.

     

There are a few things about this trip which have changed my perception about certain things…most likely I will cover these in a blog once the trip is done.  For instance, as a kid I looked upon the Yukon in the eyes of “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon”…with the Yukon being a harsh, hard land with amazing mountainous beauty.  Today it hit me just how lush and green the land is, how pure the waters are, and clean the air smells.  Harsh?  Yes, during the winter it is very harsh.  Mountains?  Yes, the mountains are wonderful.  But what was missing in the old TV show of Sergeant Preston of the Yukon was the Yukon…it was filmed in Colorado!  What a wonderful place the Yukon is…and yet we only saw a very small portion of the Yukon while traveling the Alaska Highway, along with the side trips to Skagway and to Haines.  Even if we went up to Dawson City…that is still adding a small amount of the vast area that the Yukon covers.  Like Alaska, where you only see a small portion of the state, even though you have traveled all the major highways and some of the minor highways…it is so large that you can spend a lifetime and still not see it all.   Tomorrow we start along the Cassiar Highway, down into British Columbia, on our way to see some bears in Hyder.

Watson Lake, Yukon

Got up at 3:30 am to let Skruffy out (again...she is drinking up so much water during this trip that she can't hold it all night), opened the door after I hooked her up to the leash and IT WAS LIGHT OUTSIDE ALREADY!   The sun went down around 9:30, it was dark by 10:15, and light again by 3:30...wow, this is going to be different.

We left Fort Nelson before 6:30 am, and took it nice and easy to Watson Lake.  We stopped at Muncho Lake for nearly 2 hours, but unfortunately it was overcast...but we still got nice pictures of the lake.  Yes, we did hit snow again.  Yes, we did see 3 bears, got pictures of 2 of them.  Went around a corner and big female moose was standing right there in the middle of the road, got a fuzzy picture through the snowy windshield of the moose too.  Passed on getting pics of the dead moose along side of the road later.  Also saw two young Stone Sheep that we have pictures of.

So where are the pictures???   With this slow connection that we have at Baby Nugget RV Park just outside of town, all you are going to get is words this time.  By-the-way, only two or three RV spots will pickup the WiFi at the park, you need to ask...otherwise you have to walk up to the office and use it there.  We have one of the spots that get it, and it is slow, and it is not our connection to them...it is their Internet connection.   Also, the four stations on cable are fuzzy (or don't come in at all).  But hey, this is the Yukon, what do you expect???

Tomorrow we are going to stay in Haggish, YT, which is only 220 miles away.  After a night there, we will land in Skagway Alaska, which is just 90 short yet beautiful miles away.  Not sure how long we will be in Skagway, 3-4 nights would be my guess...we want to be in Anchorage around the 10th so that we can get our prescriptions refilled.  While in Skagway I will try to post pictures from today and tomorrow's travels...unless tomorrow is stronger Internet than today...we can only hope.