Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Alaska 2015 - Day 15 Watson Lake - Whitehorse

Day 15 – 5-26-15 Tuesday We ate breakfast, filled up with fuel and departed Watson Lake at 8:15AM headed for Whitehorse for the night. The scenery was kind of bland compared to yesterday for most of the trip today. There were some beautiful areas where the mountains had snow on the tops and places where the river were running near the highway. We did not see any wildlife today except for one bird.

After about 2 hours of driving we pulled into the Rancheria Falls Recreation Site for a break and to take a hike to the falls. There is a nice trail and boardwalk through the boreal forest to the falls. There had to be millions of gallons of water rushing through a narrow opening in the rock walls in the forest. I told Lena I had driven 4000 miles to see this. It was quite stunning. The hike was short but the first time we have had a chance to do any walking though the forest but we expect to do this quite a bit in Alaska when we aren't traveling every day. After driving a couple more hours we stopped in Teslin at the Nisutlin Trading Post. It is a community store with a little bit of everything. We got some fried chicken for lunch.

Then we drove on to Whitehorse and stopped at the Caribou RV Park for the night about 2:30PM. After setting up in site 7 we unhooked the Toad and drove into the city of Whitehorse and stopped at the Visitor's Center to get some information. They have a Wal-Mart so we went there to get a few items. I found something to fix the bad 12 volt plug on my tire pressure monitor so I got it working again without having to have one shipped to me while on the road. On the way back to the CG we stopped at the airport to take photos of a DC-3 airplane that is mounted on a metal post. It will rotate when the wind blows just like a weather vane. After returning to the CG we walked over to the Wolf's Den Restaurant on the CG grounds for supper. We ordered the Jaegerschnitzel and Fancy Salad. This was the best Schnitzel we have had since we lived in Germany. The restaurant and CG is owned/operated by a Swiss family and they prepare everything fresh when you place your order.

It began to rain a little when we got back to the MH. The first rain we have had since we left South Dakota. Maybe it will keep some of the dust down. It is dry here and very few parking lots are paved around the small towns so everything is dusty.

Yesterday I was commenting on the good jobs the Canadians did with their road signs. Well yesterday we were in British Columbia and today we are in the Yukon. Actually as we traveled today we went back and forth over the borders between the two Providences 7 times. The Yukon road department is not near as generous with their road signs. Very few curve signs and to warn you of a bump or bad place in the pavement they set out a orange traffic cone with a orange flag in it where in British Columbia they have a regular sign with a bump symbol on it with the number of meters to the bump. We drove on a section of dusty gravel for about 3 miles today in a road construction area. Anyone that is thinking about driving to Alaska that likes to keep their vehicle spotlessly clean either will have to accept that it is not going to stay clean on the trip or will have to forget about making the trip. Our MH and Jeep has never been this dirty but it will wash off.



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