Continental Divide, YT to Whitehorse, YT – 254 miles (including 62 miles driving in and around the Whitehorse area)
As usual, the day began cool and cloudy, with the temperature 51 degrees. I see a pattern developing here. After a quick breakfast of cereal and toast, we dumped our black water tank, took showers, and were on the road at 9:00 am. I was wrong in yesterday’s post when I said the highway was in Yukon for good; a short ways west of our overnight stop it dipped back into BC for a 42-mile stretch. Now we’re in Yukon for good.
After driving for about an hour-and-a-half, we were ready for a break, so we stopped for a cup of coffee and a piece of rhubarb pie at the Dawson Creek Lodge, a combination restaurant, motel, and RV park. Except for the lack of gas pumps, this is a typical configuration for a “full service” facility which is found every 50 to 75 miles along the Alaska Highway. This, however, was one of the nicer facilities that we’ve seen: fairly new and really clean. The motel facilities looked to be of modular construction, with each of the three buildings containing five or six rooms (we didn’t count) overlooking Teslin Lake. To the south, across the lake and over the border in BC are the Dawson Peaks, a single massive with three individual 6500-ft peaks. In addition, there are several small individual cabins down by the lake, some old and tiny, but some newer ones that look very similar to the typical KOA Kabins. The cabins are nestled in a grove of aspens, surrounded by lupines and fireweed. We didn’t drive through the RV park, but if it’s up to the quality of the rest of the facility, it’s definitely a place to consider for an overnight stop on our way south. For the record, the Dawson Peaks Resort is at Mile 769.6 / Km 1232 of the Alaska Highway, a dozen or so miles east of the Town of Teslin.
Coming into Teslin, there is a pull-out overlooking the long bridge where the highway crosses Nisutlin Bay, a large arm of Teslin Lake. This is a great photo op, plus it has several interpretive panel displays that talk about the history of the area. It was here that we learned that Teslin Lake is a natural lake, and is 78 miles long by three miles long (the name comes from an Indian word meaning “long narrow water”). It is believed to be about 700 feet deep. Looking at a map of this area, you see several large lakes in the region; all are long and narrow, and oriented pretty much on the same north-northwest to south-southeast axis. It’s obvious even to a non-geologist like me that these lakes all result in the same crunching of the earth’s surface as the North American and Pacific plates collided however many millions of years ago.
It started raining a few miles northwest of Teslin, and continued with a light but fairly steady pace almost all the way into Whitehorse. This was the first significant daytime rain we’ve had thus far; mostly we’ve just had brief showers. Even this one was light enough that we never adjusted our windshield wipers to run continuously.
We stopped for lunch at a picnic area overlooking the lake, a few hundred feet off the highway. We warmed up some leftover Cajun rice and beans with sausage from a few nights ago and listened to some quiet jazz on the iPod and the soft rain pattering on the roof of the motorhome while we ate. It was very peaceful; in fact, it was a brief microcosm of our entire trip (at least since we left the hustle and bustle of the US and most of Alberta). Life is good.
Not long after we got back on the highway, we crossed a small creek with a signpost that said Judas Creek. Jeanette and I both were immediately struck with the memory of one of my Dad’s favorite expressions, “Judas priest!” He had several such sayings, such as “Jesus H. Christ!” Or, when he really wanted to emphasize his displeasure with something, he’d say it in Spanish: “Hay-soos ha-che Christo!” My favorite was always when he wanted us to try something, like when we were little kids and he was trying to get us to take a dose of medicine; he’d say, “Try this…it’s good for karffs, colds, arseholes, and pimples on the dinkle.”
But back to the topic at hand, our trip experiences. We arrived in Whitehorse, the capitol of Yukon Territory and a town of 25,000 population, at approximately 2:00 or maybe 2:30 pm. Whitehorse straddles the Yukon River, and even this far upstream the river is quite wide, perhaps two hundred yards or so. Our first stop was to get gas (1.319 per litre), then to find an auto parts store and pick up a replacement bulb for a burned out daytime running light on the motorhome. Daytime lights are the law in Canada, although most newer vehicles, our motorhome included, now have automatic headlight switches that turn them on automatically, day or night. We then went down to the center of town to see a small museum that was highlighted in the Milepost, our main guidebook for the Alaska Highway. The museum is located in “The Old Log Church,” which, as the name implies, is an old log church dating from the 1800’s. The displays are dedicated to the early Anglican missionaries who ventured thousands of miles into the wilderness to bring the word of God to the Native Americans in what was then a big blank spot on the map of North America. After the museum, we made a brief visit to a local gallery which featured the work of local artists. Leaving the downtown area we spotted a restaurant named Sanchez Cantina, with a sign that said “The only TRUE Mexican food in the Yukon.” That was too much to resist – it had been at least two weeks since we’d had any Mexican food and we were starting to experience severe cravings. Since it was too early for dinner we decided to go check into our chosen campground for the night, the Takhina Hot Springs RV Park, and then come back into town for dinner. Even though this meant a 20-mile trip out to the campground, 20 miles back into town and another twenty back to the campground, we felt compelled to do so. Resistance is futile when it comes to Mexican food. Well, it wasn’t good ol’ Tex-Mex, but it was close enough – just seeing the brightly colored tablecloths, hand-painted Mexican platters and serapes hanging on the walls, the bullfight paintings, and tasting a Dos Equis was slice of heaven in this far north land of Sgt Preston.
Tomorrow we head north up the Klondike Highway to Dawson City, then across the Top of the World Highway into Alaska. Just as tonight, we may not have internet access for a few days, so we’ll have a lot to post the next time we reach a wi-fi hotspot.
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