OH MY GOODNESS! What an incredibly beautiful day!

We left our hotel in Dawson City at 8:30 and as we were driving out of the city, past the 10 km of dredge tailings on either side of the road, the car in front of us – that was traveling quickly – startled a cow moose and her calf. The car braked, but by then the moose was on the fun for the bush.  I only managed to catch two photos as they ran away.   Our first few kilometers were somewhat slower than we liked.  We were behind a car that was behind a big water or oil truck, so we drove in their dust, literally.The truck, very kindly, pulled off in the first wide spot it came to and then we were off.  The Dempster has two road conditions: dry and dusty OR wet and slippery.  The road has a notorious reputation with many horror stories of getting stuck in mud, or sliding off the road, or driving through huge ruts and rocks that eat your tires.  We have driven a lot of forestry roads, which can be very rocky and rugged, so we found the Dempster to be pretty good in comparison.All we had ever heard about the road, other than the scary tales of vehicle disasters was the it was a nice, scenic drive.  That is an incredible understatement.  It is 369 km (229 miles) from Mile 0 of the Dempster to Eagle Plains (just over half way). The first 250 km were gorgeous, with every bend and corner revealing another beautiful mountain, or open valley.

We had been given a travelogue booklet by the lady at the Northwest Territories Visitor’s Center in Dawson City and it contained all the points of interest or geological information by the kilometer road markers.  It was a very handy little book to have.

This blog will be very full of photographs of scenery.  There are no towns or buildings other than road maintenance camps between the beginning of the Dempster and Eagle Plains. 71 km (45 miles) up the road is Tombstone Territorial Park.  The highway travels for 70 km through the park.  Tombstone protects 2,200 square kilomters of the Ogilvie Mountains and the Blackstone Uplands; which are two of the seven ecoregions that the Dempster passes through before it reaches the end of the road at Inuvik. There are not many geocaches hidden along the Dempster Highway between the beginning and end of the road – only about 6-7; the first one of which was hidden off one of the hiking trails in Tombstone.There was this lovely lichen growing all over the hillsides along the trail.       This is the view from the Tombstone Range Viewpoint.There’s that word – Beringia – again.  There was a vast area of this northern region that was not covered by glacier ice and therefore  has very different geology, topography and plants than that which was carved by the glaciers.  It is called Beringia.While I was taking photos from the viewpoint, John crossed the road, climbed up the sloping side of this bluff and found another geocache that was hidden 25-30 meters away.A kilometer or so up a side road took us to a microwave tower, another cache, and a lovely view of Goldensides Mountain.

Between km 78 and 158 we drove through the Blackstone Uplands The viewscape is just immense.  I often comment as we drive through the Rockies along the Trans-Canada Highway that Canada has a tremendous amount of space and open, forested countryside.  When you come up to the Yukon and the Northwest Territories and drive for hours with no towns, very few vehicles and open views like these you understand how true that is! We are truly blessed. Moose are not abundant in the Blackstone Uplands but they are sometimes seen feeding in this small lake.  The lake is also a favourite place for waterfowl.  There were several kinds of duck-type birds swimming on the far shore as well as three Tundra Swans.  Even with my zoom lens they were too far away to photograph.  About 150 bird species have been seen in the area.Chapman Lake is at km 116 and is the largest lake on the Dempster Highway. Aside from the establishment of the Dempster Highway, this alpine tundra environment has probably changed very little over the past 100,000 years or more.  What we saw today is likely the same view the first people would have had as they roamed eastword from Asia, across the Bering land bridge, and into what is now the interior of Alaska, and northwestern Yukon.  This area is on the migration route of the Woodland Caribou.  The animals are all up at the Bering Sea at this time of year having calves and mating for next year, but you can see the trails (faint white lines) they travel on the side of the rocky scree of this mountainside.  Personally, I think it would just be easier to follow the road… Red Creek and Sulpher Springs is at km 168 and the beginning of the Ogilvie River ecoregion. The brilliant orange-brown stain in the mud and the surrounding vegetation, for the next 25 kilometers, is the high parts of calcium, magnesium, bicarbonate, sulfate, hydrogen sulfide, sodium and chlorine in the water.  Some of it is highly acidic as well.  Don’t drink the water. Sapper Hill was named in 1971 in honour of the 3rd Royal Canadian Engineers who built the Ogilvie River bridge.  “Sapper” is a nickname for an army engineer.

We stopped at the Engineer Creek Campground and had some lunch.

 The wild roses are abundant here, but the stems are not at all friendly.  Late June and early July is the best time to see the wildflowers.The thick, but spindly trees are called ‘drunken’ boreal forest.  Since they are growing on the thin layer of dirt above the permafrost they are constantly shifting with the freezing and thawing of the soil that holds their shallow roots.Crossing Engineer Creek bridge over the Ogilvie River.These spires, towers, and spikes are called tors.  They are the product of frost shattering.  Water seeps into cracks and joints in the hard bedrock, then freezes and expands, forcing the rock apart until it falls down the slope.  The larger, more solid blocks remain.  All of these photos are posted here in the order I took them during the day.  The variety of mountains and how quickly they change from one type to another is amazing.There is a pullout at km 221, called Elephant Rock.  If we did not have our handy-dandy little travelogue booklet we would never have stopped here.  There is a tor on a distant mountain ridge that has the shape, complete with trunk, of an elephant.  You have to know where to look or you would never notice it.  We could see it very clearly with the binoculars. The photos, even with maximum zoom, had to be cropped quite a bit. The Eagle Plain Plateau is the last of the ecoregions we drove through today.  At the top of seven-mile hill (which is seven miles long and steep) is the Ogilvie-Peel viewpoint.  We pulled into an unofficial pullout and looked out over the vast burn from the July 1991 fire that descimated 5,500 hectares of forest and was only one of many fires in the region.  This burn was on both sides of the road for many, many kilometers. From the Ogilive viewpoint you can see the northern fringe of the Ogilivie Mountains and the valley of the Ogilvie and Peel rivers, which continues for 180 kilometers eastward.  This car and trailer were parked at the Ogilvie viewpoint.  Somebody needs a car wash.These little white flowers covered the hillside. The last 100 or so kilometers before we reach Eagle Plains at 5 pm was primarily forests on both sides of the road.  All the lovely mountains were left behind.  As I said, OH MY GOODNESS!  what a glorious day.

Today was a viewpoint and goldfields day.  After breakfast we drove up to the Midnight Dome which is a high hill overlooking the Klondike and Yukon Rivers and the town of Dawson City.  The vastness of the view was seriously impressive. Notice the two colours of water in the river.  At the upper left of the photo is the Klondike River merging with the muddy Yukon River.  It takes a fair distance downstream for the waters to fully merge.  As we were driving back down Dome Road we spotted a silver fox at the side of the road.  It turned around and disappeared into the bush. They look like a black fox, but the tips of their hair is silver, hence the name.

There was a geocache hidden at Crocus Bluff Viewpoint and the road to the bluff joins the Dome Road so we went over to find it. The Mary McLeod Road, where Crocus Bluff Viewpoint was located, also was the site of the Hillside Cemetery; begun in 1898. My brother-in-law would like this grave marker.

At the bottom of Dome Road we took the highway out of town a couple of kilometers and then turned off onto Bonanza Road.  Bonanza Road extends far down the valley and is home to the Klondike Goldrush Discovery claim and all the subsquent claims made by most of the local miners even before word of the discovery was leaked to the world.

Our first stop was Dredge #4, the largest dredge to work the gold fields.  After the first rush was over (1-2 years), many of the hopefuls who had no luck headed off to Alaska for the new discoveries there.  Dawson City was headed to be a boom/bust town. However, the town and the gold mining was saved by bringing in dredges that could remove the rock and soil from the bedrock layer.   The hardest part of finding gold in the Klondike was the permafrost.  Once you remove the top layer of soil you hit permafrost, which is frozen soil from the Ice Age and is many many meters thick. Even an iron dredge shovel cannot break through it.

The miners working their claims by hand had to build a fire on the permafrost layer of a space they had cleared, let it smolder overnight, clear away the foot or so of thawed dirt, light another fire, let smolder to melt the permafrost, clear it off, repeat, repeat, repeat until they reached bedrock.  Gold is 19 times heavier than water so it will work its way through crevices and cracks in dirt/rock until it rests on the bedrock.  Then they could extract the gold they find before moving to begin a new hole.

The dredges were floating dirt movers. There is a 12 man crew that works ahead of the dredge melting the permafrost.  #4 dredge worked the Bonanza Creek for 46 years before it was flooded when a hydro-electric dam burst and flooded the creek.  The dredge was buried in sludge and water for thirty years before Parks Canada had it lifted out of the pond, cleaned, and restored for an historic monument. (Note of trivia:  Due to the demand for water for the dredges there were dams put on the Yukon River and Dawson City was the third city in all of North America to receive electricity.)These tailing piles extend the full length of the creek into the valley. 
The long arm at the front of the dredge had 66 of these big steel buckets attached and it took 3 minutes to make one rotation digging up the dirt.

I took quite a few photos of the massive equipment in the dredge, but I am not about to try explain what they all did.  There were only 4 men required to run the dredge the majority of the time.  A fifth man would come on board to do the “Clean Up,” which is collect the gold. The dredge was built in Ohio in 1912, disassembled and sent by train to the coast, then by ship to Skagway, Alaska, and then the pieces were put on the narrow-guage White Pass and Yukon Railway to go up to the Klondike.  The large gear above is 14′ in diameter.  The tunnels on the rail line are not that wide.  They realized there was no way to get the two gears up on the railway, so they were sent back down, put on another ship and sent around to the mouth of the Yukon River in the Bering sea and brought down by river barge.  The dredge cost $500,000 and the cost was recouped in the first year.

Our tour guide was a French-Canadian gal and she showed us a 1/2 ounce nugget her boyfriend had found at Hunker Creek. The chain is one ounce of gold.  There is still lots of active claims being worked around here.After we toured the dredge we continued down the road to the sight of the Discovery Claim, the first one staked.  The first claim staked and registered on a gold field is called Discovery Claim.  All others are numbered upstream or downstream from Discovery. Hopeful goldseekers climbing the steepest part of the Chilkoot Trail from Skagway, Alaska into the Yukon.   There was a loop trail that had tons of placards about the early days of the goldrush and the life and work of the miners.  I took tons of photos of them all but am only putting a few of the most interesting ones in here.

Further down the road from Discovery Claim is Claim #6. This is a Free Claim and people can bring their own gold pans and spend some time looking for gold. From Claim #6 we turned around and drove back to Dawson, passing the huge Dredge #4 on the way.  This White Channel operation was carving the whole side off a mountain.

Back in Dawson we found a few more geocaches (we only have three of the twenty left to find. We will get them when we are back here on Sunday after we return from Tuktayuktuk.)  One was hidden under a huge rock at the ferry landing.  This is one of the free on-demand ferries that run on the rivers up in the north during the summer months.  We will be taking this ferry later as we cross the river to get to the Top of the World Highway into Alaska.Now you know more about placer gold mining than you ever cared to learn.  It was a most interesting day.  We have an early rise tomorrow to drive half of the distance to Inuvik, which is 766 km north (475 miles) on gravel road.  Hopefully it will not rain as the road becomes very muddy and slippery when it is wet which will turn the seven hour drive to Eagle Plains (the half way point) into a much longer one.

We took a day off from ‘touristing’ today.  We slept in a little bit, had a late breakfast, and decided to take a walk and perhaps find some geocaches.  There are 20 of them around here and we will probably find them all – or close to that.

Dawson City is still very much an early 1900’s town.  The streets are wide and dirt.  The sidewalks are wooden boardwalks.  The buildings are restored from the goldrush era (1898) or have been built to look like they were built then.  The whole place is 12 blocks long and about 8 blocks wide so it is easy to get around by foot. Our hotel is a block long on both sides of the street.  The one side is all one building painted to look like several.  The other side, where our room is, has three separate buildings.  It is a nice place, except there is no wi-fi in the rooms, only the lobby, restaurant, and courtyard.  But we were told this would be the case so we were not too shocked.  It works pretty well and we are only usually on in the evening so, for us, it is not too bad.

The first building we explored was a display by Parks Canada with photos and comments from people who were here during the goldrush and the early days of the city.  (The city of Dawson is a Canadian Heritage Site.)  These nice two-story buildings have been built only four years after the crude log shacks and mud bog roads!

I loved the old doors at the entrance to the exhibit building.This used to be the Commissioner’s building, it is now the museum. Be worried, very worried, if I go explore it….  The Yukon Visitor’s Center and the Northwest Territories Visitor’s Center are across the street from each other.  Dawson City is in the Yukon Territory and the Dempster Highway is 40 km east of town.  The Dempter is 700+ km of gravel road and is the only land access to the Northwest Territories communities of Inuvik and Tuktayuktuk, so NWT staffs a Visitor’s Center here as well.  This hotel has been closed for a few years for renovations and is now open with regular entertainment shows.   During the four months of the year that the river was open, boats would bring supplies of anything and everything that might be needed in the town during the 8 months the river was frozen.  The goods would be stored in several long warehouses like this and distributed to the stores for sale to the miners and families as needed.  For a very high price, of course.Of the 20 geocaches in town, Parks Canada has hidden six and Grade 7 classes of the last few years have hidden four.  The Parks Canada caches are hidden at historic buildings and if you find at least four of the six you go to the Yukon Visitor’s Center and give them the answers to a question about each (the question and answers are on the log paper with each cache) and they will give you a prize.  On our stroll today, we found all six of them.

Tomorrow we will go back to seeing the various historical sites and museums in the area.  It was nice to have a lazier day.  We enjoyed our walk and even got some laundry done this afternoon.  It is almost 10 pm as I write this and outside it is a bright and sunny as if it were noon!

Happy Canada Day!  We spent the day driving 535 km from Whitehorse to Dawson City, mostly in the rain.  It was steady for the first few hours, then would quit for awhile, then start again.  As we were nearing Dawson City it stopped all together and we had a nice evening our first night in town.  We are staying two days and three nights.

Not far out of Whitehorse we stopped at a mining museum to find a geocache. The museum wasn’t open. It was either too early in the morning or it wasn’t opening at all.  It did look a bit neglected.

Our next find as we left Whitehorse was a short distance down Horse Creek Road and at the end of a 125 meter walk along a trail to a lovely view overlooking the valley. There was another earthcache hidden at a rest stop where there were Puddingstones.  I have never heard of them, but we learned all about them from the signs.  It was pouring rain. We got very wet even in the short amount of time we were out of the truck.As we drove past a break in the trees we saw some lovely colour in a little lake.  John kindly backed up so I could get a couple of photos. It would be gorgeous in the sunshine.The Five Finger Rapids are famous for the difficulty boats and rafts had in negotiating the currents around them in the river.  The columns are conglomerate stone the same as the Puddingstone. There was an earth cache here as well, but it was raining still and to find the answer to the last question you needed to log the find you had to go to the viewing spot down by the river – 219 wet steps down and back up.  We passed. During one of the lulls in the rain we spotted this cute little cub sitting on the road.  When it heard the truck coming, it hightailed into the bush; where, I suspect, momma was waiting. I commented on the name of the museum in Whitehorse saying who knew what Beringia was, well apparently it is an ice age era that contained lots of giant-size critters.  Now we all know. (I still think a different name would be more affective for that building though.) There is no shortage of geological placards around these parts.As we drove into Dawson City both sides of the road had high, long, long, long, piles of rocks and gravel.  There was even a housing subdivision in some of them.  They are all tailings from the gold mines.  I didn’t take any photos but we will be going past them again so I will take some shots later.It felt like a long day today, but we arrived in Dawson City at 5.  We left Whitehorse at 8:45 so the day was shorter than some others we have had lately.  Maybe it was the rain.  Tomorrow we have a full day in Dawson with no places we have to be.

The Yukon Transportation Museum had two exhibition rooms.  There was also a large outside area with old vehicles in it. We spent a happy couple of hours wandering around.  And, as usual I took lots of photos of placards, items and photographs.  This blog will contain many of them, and not much else.

Outside the museum they had the world’s largest weather vane.  A DC 3 airplane that had been abandoned after a nosedive in the bush.  It was rescued, restored, and turned into a weathervane.  It was amazing how smoothly it rotated in even a light breeze. The firstroom  was all about the bush pilots and their adventures and daring during the early days of flying in the north.This sign was sitting on a table beside some postcards.  Something to think about.

Rafting down Miles Canyon before the dam tamed the rapids. This mural of gold seekers climbing the Chilkoot Trail to the Klondike Gold Fields was painted on the museum wall.This photograph is of some would-be gold panners making the climb.  Notice the two young children watching from the top of the ridge.One of the White Pass and Yukon Railway cars that rode the narrow-guage rail up from Skagway, Alaska to the Yukon goldfields.  I had to crop lots of the signs to bring up the text so some of the sizes do not line up well.We learned that the White Pass and Yukon Railway developed the intermodal (container) method of shipping that is used world-wide today.This huge macine was used by the U.S. army, on snow, like a railway.The first truck my grandfather bought for his farm and orchard was a surplus army truck just like this one.At last, foot sore and brain filled we finished at the museum and went to find a couple of nearby geocaches; one of which was in front of the Whitehorse Fire Department.  And happily for John three of the firemen were outside at the back cleaning a monitor so he had the chance to chat for a minute.  (One must never miss an opporunity to talk to a fellow firefighter.)   There was a cache hidden at the base of this wonderful sculpture.    We had fun identifying some of the many objects that had been used to make the Whitehorse horse.                 The wineglass in the hoof is a nice touch.  And that concluded our day in Whitehorse. We will be stopping here again after we leave Alaska and there are a couple of things we didn’t have time to see today so I will have another opportunity to check them out.

We leave for Dawson City (544km/338 miles northwest) in the morning and will be spending three nights there.

Since we were not traveling today we slept in until 9, then walked down the street to the restaurant in the neighbouring hotel for breakfast. .Our hotel – old, but well maintained and very quiet.

There is a Jack London Museum in Dawson City that I plan to visit.  The sculpture on the right is in honour of all the prospectors who opened up the north. We wanted to visit the Yukon Territory Legislative Building and it was right across the street from the Visitor’s Center.  Unfortunately it was closed for the Canada Day long weekend and would not open again until Tuesday.  Fortunately for us, we will be coming back to Whitehorse later in our journey so we will try get a tour then. Parks Canada adminsters the S.S. Klondike, the largest steam paddlewheeler to ply the Yukon River. I had to have my photo take in the red Adriondack chair.  When we drove across Canada in 2014 I had my photo taken sitting in all the red chairs we found in the various National Parks.    The fire box for the steam boiler.  It burned a cord of an hour.This is the vent tubes that sends the steam to the engine room.  The sand bag John is holding weighs 24 lb, the same weight as the chunk of galena (with silver and lead).  Each ore sack weighed five times that. By the time all these ore sacks arrived in the smelter in Kellog, Idaho they had each been handled about 18 times getting put on and taken off carts, boats and trains.Sadly, the upper decks were closed for renovations – although I saw no evidence of renovations going on.  We could peek through the kitchen to the officer’s and passenger’s diningroom.  The crew dining room was a lot more spartan.

‘There is a Beringia Museum near the Transportation Museum and there was an earthcache and a regular cache nearby so we stopped to find them and take a picture of the mammoths.  The parking lot was empty.  I would suggest, even though it is not strictly correct, to rename the place the Mammoth Museum or something like that.  Who knows what a Beringia is?  Why would you stop there?  And the parking lot at the front of the building was small and only for handicap parking.  You needed to drive back onto the frontage road, past a little wood grove to the main parking lot and then walk back along a trail through the bush to the museum.  I would think between the signage and the awkward parking the place loses a lot of business. I may be wrong; could be packed all summer. I have cut this day into two blogs because after we saw found the geocaches and photographed the mammoth sculptures we went to the Transportation Museum and you all know what that means!  Lots of photos of stuff and informational signage.

It is 445 kilometers (276 miles) from Watson Lake to Whitehorse.  We left Watson Lake at 8:30 under cloudy skies; but no rain.

Before we left Watson Lake we had to visit the world reknown Sign Forest.  There are now over 90,000 signs (and counting) posted on the poles.  Many people know about the sign forest before they come to Watson Lake and they bring a sign with them (there is a tremendous amount of stolen property posted here).  Or, if you didn’t come prepared you can get supplies (I would guess for a fee) and make your own.

It would take a couple of hours to walk past them all.  We thought it was quite a’propo that we parked right in front of a sign posted by folks from home.And if there are not enough signs, you can check out the license plates. Just out of town we made our first stop for a geocache that was hidden under a bridge.                                       Lots of open country and trees.  We planned to find a geocache hidden at Rancheria Falls and noted the roadside sign that said it was 2 km up the road.  There was no corresponding sign at the entrance road which was narrow and had trees on each side.  If John hadn’t slowed down and watched for a turn we would have missed it.  We noticed this lack of signage some other times during the day.                                                                                              The first falls                                                     The second FallsThe water flows around this little island and has a small waterfall at each side.  Very pretty. (We found the cache too.)

There was an Earth Cache at the Continental Divide. (An earth cache has not got a container or log book to sign.  It is in a place of historical or geographical or geological significance.  Usually there are information placards at the site, but not always.  To log the cache as found you must send the answers to the questions in the log description to the cache owner to prove you were actually at the site.)  I like Earth Caches.  But then, I like to read and learn interesting information.

There was another Earth Cache at this location describing geological characteristics of the area.  The area is named for the town in BC called Quesnel because at Quesnel there is an excellent example of these formations.T 260 km (161 miles) from Watson Lake is the community of Teslin. We stopped here for some expensive ice cream cones – $5 each for two small scoops. I did like the local speeding deterrent.  A very clever life-size RCMP cruiser, complete with the shadow of an officer inside. On the way into Whitehorse we stopped at Miles Canyon. We continued along the side of the Yukon River into Whitehorse rather than go back out to the highway.  Since our hotel is right downtown, which is beside the river, we would have had to leave the highway later anyway and drive toward the river.  Besides, it was pretty.

There was a viewpoint overlooking Miles Canyon along the way. There are lots of float planes in the north and one was coming in for a landing as we were at the viewpoint. It was a nice drive along the river into Whitehorse.  We arrived about 4 o’clock and had time to wander around downtown for awhile before dinner.  We are staying in Whitehorse two nights so no long drive ahead tomorrow.

Our drive from Fort Nelson in northwestern BC to Watson Lake, just across the Yukon Territory border took us all day – just over 10 hours.  It was a beautiful day, amidst gorgeous scenery, blessed by an abundance of animal sightings.

We were not far past our stop at the Folded Mountains information placard when we came across this lovely Cinnamon bear.   We saw our first Stone Sheep a few kilometers past the Cinnamon Bear. Muncho Lake is considered one of the primary jewels of the Northern Rockies.  It is a deep, cold, glacial lake.  It is long – 11 km (7 m) and 1.6 km (1 m wide).  When the sun is out, which unfortunately it wasn’t when we arrived at the bottom end, it is a brilliantly stunning green. There was another pullout at an area frequented by Stone Sheep, although there were none in evidence.  But, the placards were interesting. One of the vehicles we had been leapfrogging along the highway was a family from Texas.  Mom, Dad, and two adult daughters were on their way to Alaska.  We chatted to them several times.  We were already at the pull-out when they stopped and they were so excited to have seen a moose.  They did not see the Stone Sheep that we had seen earlier and they thought the big brown bear was a Grizzly due to the fact it was not black. (Black Bears come in black, brown, and even blonde).  We told them about the different colours of the black bears and also said that if they see another moose they have to hang onto it until we get there.  They told us likewise we were to keep any stone sheep we see until they arrive.

Sure enough, a few corners later this group of Stone Sheep were standing around on the road.  (They didn’t find a moose for us though.)                                                       The kids are very cute. I bet they are very happy when they are finally be rid of all the itchy winter hair.

We pulled into Muncho Lake Provincial Park and by then the sun was brighter so the colour and reflections were lovely.    More sheep. They lick the salt left from the winter road clearing. Our next critter viewing was Bison.  We had not seen one all day and over the next hour or so we saw several groups of them or lone males. The geocache map told us there was a cache hidden at Smith River Falls so we had to go find it.

There was also a cache hidden at a place called the Whirlpool.  There was a huge pile of drift wood that had accumlated over the years during high water.                                 Very active, churning water.

The Alaska Highway goes from BC into the Yukon and back into BC again about 6 times.  This is an ‘unofficial’ sign at one of the crossings.

Contact Creek is an actual creek but the real claim-to-fame of the spot is the meeting of the southbound and northbound teams of the Alaska Highway in September 1942.  It took another month for the road to be officially opened by dignitaries and used by the military.                                                     This is an official Welcome to the Yukon sign.

The last two critter sightings before we arrived at Watson Lake. We checked into our hotel, found a place to eat dinner, and then went to see the 8:30 pm show at the Northern Lights Center where we saw two shows: one explained how the northern lights come to be (residual energy from plasma eruptions on the sun’s surface) and the second one on how they got the name Aurora Borealis and when and where to see them best.  There was some spectular photography of the lights.

Back in our hotel it was now after 9:30 pm and we had been up and on the move since 6:45 am.  I loaded my photos from the day onto the laptop, sorted through about half of them and went to bed.  The next day we drove to Whitehorse where we are booked for two nights in a hotel right downtown.

At 3 am I looked out the hotel window in Fort Nelson and this is how light it was.We left Fort Nelson at 8:30 and arrived in Watson Lake at 6:45.  The driving time is about 7 hours.  All the additional time was due to scenic stops for photographs, critters, and geocaches.  My goodness, what a day!  I think we topped the all-time animal count outside of a zoo or animal park.  We saw 8 bears, 1 elk (as it disappeared into the trees),15 Stone sheep, plus 3 or 4 kids, and 32 or more bison, plus 8 calves. We were blessed with a lovely day; better than the weatherman promised.  And since the drive was very scenic we had a beautiful, allbeit, long drive.
Remember, this the Alaska Highway built in 1942 in just over eight months.  They moved a lot of dirt and rock.  Also when they scraped the top of the permafrost off the water in the soil melted and turned everything to mud so deep it would swallow a bulldozer.  They learned to lay a corduroy layer (logs and branches) as a base.  Much of the highway still has this base.  They built 8 miles of road per day, seven days a week, working double shifts during the long daylight hours of summer.This is not dust or smoke in the photo on the left; it is a splattered bug on the windshield.We had been driving for an hour or so and suddenly a police car with sirens and lights came by.  We wondered where on earth it would have come from (Fort Nelson, we guess) and where it was going.  We didn’t have long to wait.  About 10 minutes later we caught up to the emergency; a burned up car.  The couple had the presence of mind to unhitch their trailer when the car started to burn, and they were uninjured, but there was nothing left of their little car.  I didn’t get a full photo of the trailer, but their car was much to small to be towing it.

We were arriving at the same stopping places as a few other motorists and we would often chat for a bit.  Everyone we spoke to mentioned how small the car was to be towing the trailer.  One couple told us that the people had tried to drive up the hill earlier and were unable to make it so they had turned around and were coming back down when the fire started – probably brakes.  Poor people; That would be a nightmare to sort out, with vehicle registration, loss of personal affects in the car, towing cost for the trailer, getting a new vehicle, staying somewhere.  The list is endless.  So sad.

There are some very long steep hills on the Alaska Highway.  When it first opened for the military in 1942 there were some 90 degree corners and 25% grade hills.  Over the years things have been smoothed out and slightly re-routed to alleviate them, but there were some long climbs. (The current Alaska Highway is about 44 miles shorter than the original due to the upgrades and improvements.)

These two bears must be litter mates as they were together which is rare to see with bears.

We had spoken to a couple of ladies in Yellowknife that had come the day before along the route we were driving.  They said we MUST stop at Tetsa River Lodge for the best cinnamon buns they have ever had.  We did, and we agree.  They were amazing cinnamon buns.                        Appropriately called Stone Mountain.  There was a geocache hidden at Summit Lake Falls.  There was no signage or anything to indicate a waterfall nearby.  We parked on a wide spot off the road and went looking for the indicated trail.  It wasn’t by any means an obvious path at the roadside, but there was a good trail to follow the short distance to the cache.  We never would have know this pretty little falls existed except for geocaching.  This is quite a common occurance when travelling around.

                                                                       Summit Lake was very pretty. There were four Hoodoos (eroded columns where the cap on top is harder rock and the sandstone layer underneath erodes) on a distant mountainside.  Unless you are in the habit, as we are, of stopping at any pullout with a placard, you would never notice them. There was also an earthcache here which was an added incentive. The river flowing through this valley was glacier green.  At bit too far away to see well though.This area, below, is the called Beaverdam, for obvious reasons. This couple had pulled over just for a few minutes and liked the view so much they stayed for lunch and a rest.  All of the rivers are running high and are brown they are carrying so much dirt along.  There were two thin waterfalls coming down the mountain on the opposite side of the road.

 We don’t know what this plant is called.  John wants to call it Arctic Cotton.  The blossoms are gone and this is the seed fluff opening. This blog encompasses about half of our day on June 28.  I will get some more done as soon as I can.

Today was a down day. We slept in and missed the free breakfast at the hotel (they only serve until 9 am. Can you imagine?).  It was a short drive down the road to a breakfast place.  Fort Nelson is  a very sprawling commnity.  The majority of the businesses are on frontage roads either side of the highway and there are tracts of empty lots between them.  There is no downtown core that we could find so you would find it very difficult to walk and do your shopping errands.  We spent the morning fighting internet in our hotel room.

This hotel is very large.  It had lots of rooms in the original building but at some time a big addition was added.  Everything is made of cement block – exterior and interior.  The exterior is light brown block, the interior is gray.  The corridors look like the inside of a prison.                                The new-looking Community Center.

About 1:30 we ventured forth and went down the road to the Fort Nelson Heritage Museum.  Now this is primarily a VERY eclectic collection of old cars, machinery, memorabilia, photos and items that have been compiled by the owner/curator Mr. Brown.  It was very interesting to walk around the various buildings, but in no way was this a proper museum with controlled atmospheric conditions or tidy displays.  Stuff was heaped all over and there were occasional placards with explanations.  This being hunting and trapping territory there were also lots of taxidermy specimens.

Because the building is dimly lit and full of stuff it was very hard to get good photos, even with flash.  Mostly I used a high ISO which, unfortunately, gives a yellow cast to images.  However, my photos are for my travel records, nothing else so it isn’t too big a deal. The Alaska Highway (originally called the Alcan Highway) was built in 1942 during a time when America was worried about an invasion from the Japanese through Alaska  after the attack on Pearl Harbor the previous December.  The highway was built to provide supplies and equipment to the north.  The 1700 miles (2257 km) of very rough road was built in 8 months and 12 days at a cost of $140 million.  More than 11,000 American troops, including 7 regiments of engineers, 16,000 civilian workers from the USA and Canada, and 7,000 pieces of equipment completed the task.  Construction officially began on March 8, 1942  and soldiers met at Contact Creek, near the BC/Yukon border on September 24, 1942.  The road was literally bulldozed through the wilderness.President Hoover authorized the contruction of the Alaska Highway on February 11, 1942.  The US secured rights-of-way through Canada in March.  The formal agreement between the two countries stipulated that the US pay for construciton and turn over the Canadian portion of the highway (it starts in Dawson Creek, BC and ends in Fairbanks, AK) after the war ended.  In turn, Canada furnished the rights-of-way, waived import duties, sales tax, income tax and immigration regulations, and provided construction materials along the route.  We will be driving much of the highway during our trip.

                                          Now, who doesn’t need a beaded buckskin bikini? The canoe is hanging from the ceiling above John and all the photographs on the wall document it’s construction. This photograph of a young bear clinging to a bridge support over a raging river was pretty cute.                 An original newspaper from September 11, 1939.                                              This is an albino cow moose.

 This Grizzly wasn’t very big, but it sure had long claws.This is a female silver-tip grizzly. The silver tinge to her hair goes all the way to the skin.                                     The emblematic Canadian Beaver.                               A lynx                                                              and an otter.Muskrats.  I was surprised at how big they were; about the size of  a rabbit.

                                                                                     The beautiful Snowy Owl.I had to take these two photos for my brother-in-law who loves to restore old chainsaws.Outside they have seven buildings; three of which were locked. The first was jammed full of old cars and trucks. Oh, the good old days.  It was very exciting back then to have a phone not attached to the wall and in colours other than black! This former Anglican Church was originally an army mess hall. The front entrance was a later addition.

 Where to keep your foodstuffs and meat so the critters don’t eat it all before you can. After our wander around the museum we drove about 10 km out of town to see the shallow Parker Lake (and find a geocache). We drove back to Fort Nelson, did a drive around to see if there was more of a town center beyond the highway frontage (nope), found another cache and headed to our hotel for a couple of hours of laziness before dinner.

Tomorrow we drive 522 km (324 miles) to Watson Lake.  Today turned out to be quite a nice day and I am really hoping tomorrow will be about the same.  The section of the Alaska Highway between Fort Nelson and Watson Lake is supposed to be very scenic.   This area is called the north Rockies.  Here’s hopin’.