Saturday, August 27, 2005
07/27/05 Wednesday- 07/29/05 Friday - Watson Lake to Whitehorse
07/27/05 Wednesday through 07/29/05 Friday
Today it is Watson’s Lake to Whitehorse. We are traveling 266 miles and our buddies are Johnny and Gail Dubois.
They are from New Port Richey, which is fairly close to Tampa. Both are retired. This is the second marriage for both of them. I believe they said that they met while working for IBM. Gail retired and a few years later John did. In the meantime he had started to work for AT&T and retired from there. They are very nice people and I enjoy visiting with them. The share a lot of the same interests and have a lot of the same values that we have so they are fun to travel with.
As I said yesterday, we crossed into the Yukon Territory. Today we crossed back and forth between YT and BC three or four times. They look about the same. They both have heavy timber. Mostly it is White Spruce and Lodge pole Pine with a lot of White Birch. The roads continue to be very good. When we have our departure meetings, our
wagon master always talks about how crooked and rough we sure would like to have better telephone reception and better access to the Internet, but I guess we can’t have it all.
A major point of interest today was the Continental Divide. Mary took pictures of the signs that described the watersheds. Basically, the Yukon watershed drains the country west to the Pacific, and the Mackenzie Watershed drains north to the Arctic Ocean. There are a huge number of tributaries that form a large number of connected lakes. This helped with travel before roads. There are really very few roads in this part of Canada.
One river in this system which we did cross was the Nisutlin River. The bridge across the river is the longest waterspan on the Alaska Highway. It has been there for the life of the road. It crosses at a really beautiful little village called Teslin. Teslin has a population of 482 people. They are the biggest Indian population center in the Yukon. Yukon only has a population average of one person per square mile, so it doesn’t take a lot of folks to comprise a population center. Teslin is mostly hunting and trapping economy, and they get 66 inches of snow average. The average date for their last spring frost is June 19. The average date for their first fall frost is August 19. The elevation is only 2239 feet so you know you are north, not just high.
We had lunch a place called Mukluk Annie’s. It is well known through advertising as one of the key points on the Alaska Highway. You could spend a lot of money there on their souvenirs. Soon after lunch we crossed the Yukon River at it headwaters, a place called Lewes Marsh. We followed the river a few miles north and came to our campground a few miles south of Whitehorse. Pioneer RV Park was getting a flood when we arrived. This country is semi-arid, but we seem to get rained on every day. Most of the RV Parks have fuel and an RV Wash. I filled up with fuel. Thank goodness we’ll be in Alaska before I need to fill up again. If I did my math right, we paid $3.73 per gallon. That was with a three cent per liter discount because we sere staying in the park. It is a nice park. We have a pull through site with 30-amp electricity, free cable TV and free Y-FI, which works.
After we got set up, we went downtown to an old hotel and went to the Frantic Follies.
In the gay 90’s mode, the young folks did a vaudeville type show. I’m not a big fan of that kind of entertainment, but I guess it was a treat for the gold field population in the late 1900’s. After the show we walked down the street to a Diary Queen; I am a fan of Banana Splits.
On Thursday 07/28/05, we got on a bus here and road to Frazier, BC, where we took the train to Skagway, AK. The railroad, the White Pass & Yukon Route was built in 1898 to provide transport from Skagway to Whitehorse, YT The boats brought the prospectors to Skagway and they walked through the mountains to get to the lakes which provided steamboat transportation north. The railroad was a private venture and the developer raised 10,000,000 for the project. That was a lot of money in those days. The first steamboat port on the line was
at Car Cross, YT. We went through Car Cross on the bus. We stopped and spent about 20 minutes for a bathroom break and take pictures. It is really a neat place I went into the oldest General Store in Yukon. It is still doing a business, now it is just mostly to the tourists who come through on the bus or railroad. The original name of the town was Caribou Crossing, but the had to change the name in the 1930’s when they got a post office because there was already a post office with that name.
There is no way to describe what we saw between Car Cross and Skagway. Mary’s pictures don’t really do it justice because there was a heavy cloud cover for most of the trip. After seeing the terrain that the gold
rushers walked through you can only imagine their determination. Skagway is a tourist base and port for the cruise ships. It has a beautiful setting with the sea on one side and the rest of the horizon taken by snow-covered mountains. Mary and I went into a store and discovered that a guy we bought her a tennis bracelet from in Cosumel, Mexico was now working for the same company in their store here. We only got to spend
about two hours in Skagway, but the trip was worth it.
We went back downtown Whitehorse for dinner last night. Johnny and Gail sent with us and we went to the Yukon Ribs and Salmon. Mary and I had Halibut Fish and Chips. It might have been the best fish I ever ate.
Today is Friday 07/29/05. I slept until after 9:00 this morning. Mary went out to sightsee and do some shopping. I stayed here to try to catch up on this journal. I hated not to go with Mary because this is a great place to visit. With the pictures Mary has to get into the computer, it is easy for me to put off my journal work. I was five days behind. Now I’m caught up unless Mary has something from her day that just has to be added.
At 6:00pm we are having a group dinner here in the park. It is to be BBQ. They are cooking it here and it must be good or our leaders would not buy it. They have been here before.
Today it is Watson’s Lake to Whitehorse. We are traveling 266 miles and our buddies are Johnny and Gail Dubois.
They are from New Port Richey, which is fairly close to Tampa. Both are retired. This is the second marriage for both of them. I believe they said that they met while working for IBM. Gail retired and a few years later John did. In the meantime he had started to work for AT&T and retired from there. They are very nice people and I enjoy visiting with them. The share a lot of the same interests and have a lot of the same values that we have so they are fun to travel with.As I said yesterday, we crossed into the Yukon Territory. Today we crossed back and forth between YT and BC three or four times. They look about the same. They both have heavy timber. Mostly it is White Spruce and Lodge pole Pine with a lot of White Birch. The roads continue to be very good. When we have our departure meetings, our
wagon master always talks about how crooked and rough we sure would like to have better telephone reception and better access to the Internet, but I guess we can’t have it all.A major point of interest today was the Continental Divide. Mary took pictures of the signs that described the watersheds. Basically, the Yukon watershed drains the country west to the Pacific, and the Mackenzie Watershed drains north to the Arctic Ocean. There are a huge number of tributaries that form a large number of connected lakes. This helped with travel before roads. There are really very few roads in this part of Canada.
One river in this system which we did cross was the Nisutlin River. The bridge across the river is the longest waterspan on the Alaska Highway. It has been there for the life of the road. It crosses at a really beautiful little village called Teslin. Teslin has a population of 482 people. They are the biggest Indian population center in the Yukon. Yukon only has a population average of one person per square mile, so it doesn’t take a lot of folks to comprise a population center. Teslin is mostly hunting and trapping economy, and they get 66 inches of snow average. The average date for their last spring frost is June 19. The average date for their first fall frost is August 19. The elevation is only 2239 feet so you know you are north, not just high.
We had lunch a place called Mukluk Annie’s. It is well known through advertising as one of the key points on the Alaska Highway. You could spend a lot of money there on their souvenirs. Soon after lunch we crossed the Yukon River at it headwaters, a place called Lewes Marsh. We followed the river a few miles north and came to our campground a few miles south of Whitehorse. Pioneer RV Park was getting a flood when we arrived. This country is semi-arid, but we seem to get rained on every day. Most of the RV Parks have fuel and an RV Wash. I filled up with fuel. Thank goodness we’ll be in Alaska before I need to fill up again. If I did my math right, we paid $3.73 per gallon. That was with a three cent per liter discount because we sere staying in the park. It is a nice park. We have a pull through site with 30-amp electricity, free cable TV and free Y-FI, which works.
After we got set up, we went downtown to an old hotel and went to the Frantic Follies.
In the gay 90’s mode, the young folks did a vaudeville type show. I’m not a big fan of that kind of entertainment, but I guess it was a treat for the gold field population in the late 1900’s. After the show we walked down the street to a Diary Queen; I am a fan of Banana Splits.On Thursday 07/28/05, we got on a bus here and road to Frazier, BC, where we took the train to Skagway, AK. The railroad, the White Pass & Yukon Route was built in 1898 to provide transport from Skagway to Whitehorse, YT The boats brought the prospectors to Skagway and they walked through the mountains to get to the lakes which provided steamboat transportation north. The railroad was a private venture and the developer raised 10,000,000 for the project. That was a lot of money in those days. The first steamboat port on the line was
at Car Cross, YT. We went through Car Cross on the bus. We stopped and spent about 20 minutes for a bathroom break and take pictures. It is really a neat place I went into the oldest General Store in Yukon. It is still doing a business, now it is just mostly to the tourists who come through on the bus or railroad. The original name of the town was Caribou Crossing, but the had to change the name in the 1930’s when they got a post office because there was already a post office with that name.There is no way to describe what we saw between Car Cross and Skagway. Mary’s pictures don’t really do it justice because there was a heavy cloud cover for most of the trip. After seeing the terrain that the gold
rushers walked through you can only imagine their determination. Skagway is a tourist base and port for the cruise ships. It has a beautiful setting with the sea on one side and the rest of the horizon taken by snow-covered mountains. Mary and I went into a store and discovered that a guy we bought her a tennis bracelet from in Cosumel, Mexico was now working for the same company in their store here. We only got to spendabout two hours in Skagway, but the trip was worth it.
We went back downtown Whitehorse for dinner last night. Johnny and Gail sent with us and we went to the Yukon Ribs and Salmon. Mary and I had Halibut Fish and Chips. It might have been the best fish I ever ate.
Today is Friday 07/29/05. I slept until after 9:00 this morning. Mary went out to sightsee and do some shopping. I stayed here to try to catch up on this journal. I hated not to go with Mary because this is a great place to visit. With the pictures Mary has to get into the computer, it is easy for me to put off my journal work. I was five days behind. Now I’m caught up unless Mary has something from her day that just has to be added.
At 6:00pm we are having a group dinner here in the park. It is to be BBQ. They are cooking it here and it must be good or our leaders would not buy it. They have been here before.
