Beaver Creek, YT

After leaving Tok, we drove all day and stopped for the day at Beaver Creek, the western most town in Canada.   This is one of our few RV parks during the early part of August.

We walked across the highway to the Visitor Center.  It had the usual brochures but did not have anything else to offer.  (Some visitor centers are almost like museums.)

From Beaver Creek, we continued on the Alaska Highway to Destruction Bay, Yukon Territory. This is where the north end and the south end of the highway met, when it was being built. It created many challenges for the men building it, because it crosses permafrost. They had never dealt with that before and were not quite sure how to build a road across it. Even today, with improvements, it is the roughest part of the Alaska Highway.

We found another neat park. This one is a Canadian National Park, Kathleen Lake National Park, near Haines Junction, YT.

We had planned to leave the trailer here and take a day trip to Haines, Alaska but it would have been a 132 mile drive, one way. We decided to skip it since we had already seen some coastal towns, had one more in mind and a reservation date in Seattle to meet.

Destruction Bay, YT

We found another provincial park. This one was adamant about bear activity in the area. They did not even allow tent camping, except inside a fenced area.

Haines Junction, YT

We are continuing our drive south along the Cassiar Highway. This is a 450 mile road completed in 1972 and again, the scenery is fantastic.

In our entire trip, we covered all of the Alaska Highway and only duplicated about 200 miles, from Tok to the junction with the Cassiar, just west of Watson Lake.

We stopped at the Visitor Center in Haines Junction. This is a very new building and well done. It told a lot about the native people of the area.

A side note about the names of native cultures. In the lower 48, we all them Native Americans. In Canada, they are referred to as First Nations, aborigines or indigenous people. I’m still trying to remember how they are referred to in Alaska.

There are two basic groups in Alaska and they are not related to each other. On the coast, they are Inuits and in the interior, they are Athabascan and are actually related to some of the southern tribes such as Apache.

We camped outside of Haines Junction.

Carcross, YT

We continued toward Carcross and camped in a neat Provincial park.

Leaving Haines Junction area, we were able to view Mount Kennedy and Mount Hubbard, usually hidden by clouds. Now we got back on to the Klondike Highway, this time going south.

We sat in our chairs on our patio and watched several mountain goats with our binoculars.

Skagway, Alaska

We left the trailer for a day and drove back to Alaska to visit historic Skagway. This was the start to one of the many gold rushes and lead to Dawson City. The rush itself only lasted for two years. Prospectors were required to bring a year’s supply of necessities with them, which came to about 1,000 pounds.

There were two different routes, one over a very high mountain. Men built steps into the ice and followed each other single file up the “golden steps”. However, to get all of their supplies over the mountain, they averaged 27 return trips to get all of their belongings. The distance was 33 miles but with all of the back and forth, they walked over 1,700 miles, just to get past this stage of the trip. Over a million people talked about taking this trip but only 100,000 actually set out and 30,000 made it. Only about 400 actually got rich. It is important to note that once gold was discovered, the people who lived nearby rushed in and staked claims, before news of the gold even reached the outside world. The strike was basically over before all of the prospectors even started out for the Yukon.

There are so many people (tourists) in town but there is plenty of parking available. Most of the tourists are from the cruise ships.

We stopped for a beer at the Red Onion Saloon. They offered “Upstairs” tours of this famous Red Light district saloon but we declined.

The return to our campground was equally as beautiful as the trip in. The scenery was different in reverse order.

We drove into Carcross for our last afternoon. The Visitor Center and surrounding buildings make up a neat complex of native history and art. There are several totem poles and Dave tried to get a picture of the tallest one, but the light was behind the totem and he could not get a clear picture. He tried several times from different angles.

We visited the world’s smallest desert, which looks and feels like a desert but is actually the remains of an empty lake bed, carved out by glaciers.

We drove a couple more miles to Caribou Crossing Trading Post. There were mountain goats in the hills above us!

This was a fun location. Inside, was a museum of local animals “mounted” on display and a small portion dedicated to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. There were also husky puppies to enjoy and we could have had a sled dog ride but declined.

We wanted to have a campfire for our last evening but it was way too windy to risk a fire. Dave had chopped a lot of firewood and felt bad about having to leave it behind.

The next day, we continued south towards Watson Lake and ended up at a Provincial Park we had stayed in on our way north, Big Creek. This time, we were there early and got the PRIME site, right by the creek.

Karma made up for Dave’s work with the firewood yesterday. There was a big stack of chopped wood under the picnic table, left by the last group at this site. We took advantage and had a lovely fire. This was the best night, weather wise, that we have had for a fire, since we began our life on the road.

Dease Lake, YT

Starting on the Cassiar Highway as we head south towards Seattle.

Jade City is a small “town” along the way. We stopped in to see the jade that they carve and sell.

In the parking lot, we ran into a couple who had been on the road for seven months. They started in their Argentina with a home made truck camper, with a goal of reaching Alaska. They aren’t completely sure of their plans for returning home but think they may drive to Miami and take a ship home.

We continued on the Cassiar, heading south and got to this small, free campground outside of Dease Lake. There was no one here except us!

A few days earlier, we had discovered that the noises we were hearing outside the trailer were not animals on top of the trailer but actually inside the walls of the trailer. Then, a little critter found its way into the interior of the trailer. YUCK! We bought traps and Dave set them out while we were in this campground. During the late afternoon and all night long, the traps kept going off. He trapped six mice! We had no idea there were so many but they are finally gone and I am keeping my fingers crossed that we never get any more visitors, except Rebecca.