Getting through the Yukon...
Although the Yukon had some really pretty sights and some new experiences, the Yukon is not a great place to be. It was quite disconcerting driving through the Yukon while not being able to obtain cell phone service. To me, that is unnerving in and of itself. I could not text, I could not call, I could not get on the internet to see where on God's green earth I was. Ok, ok... For all of you out there who are asking the question, "What did you do before cell phone's?" I get it... so we went old school. hehe....
We pulled out the GPS.... But even that was a mute point. Literally... "Marge" as she is affectionately known (sarcasm intended), was eerily silent. It was about that time we realized that we had to OLD, old school it and that's when we grabbed our handy, dandy.... Atlas. But to no avail. We were literally off the map. This was quite scary when every gas station you pass is closed for the season and every lodging place is boarded up. Needless to say, I did not like the Yukon.
We were smart about it the night before as we were online mapping things out, but because there was no printer available at the motel we stayed at (we barely had wi-fi!), we had to do a lot of our driving by what we wrote down. Not that it's hard to stay on the only road in and out of Alaska, we were trying to gauge where our gas and lodging stops would be.
We were two nights in the Yukon. The first night we had to backtrack a little in order to get gas and so we drove 30 miles out of our way to Watson Lake. We had just driven 12 hours up from Smithers, British Columbia and we were done for the night. We found a seedy little motel,that cost an arm and a leg, with no complimentary breakfast, filled up the car at $1.44 a liter (or litre ) and rested for the night. For my American family, $1.44 a liter doesn't sound too bad right? Well, one gallon is equal to almost 4 liters. I'll do that math and round that out for you... almost $6.00 per gallon!! Did I mention that I hated the Yukon?
But it really wasn't all bad. There were some truly beautiful sights to behold. One of the things we came across was this really interesting sign forest. It had been started in 1943 by Carl Lindley of Danville, Illinois. Carl was a soldier who was working on the Alaskan Highway. He had injured himself and was unable to work. His Commanding Officer asked him if he could repair this sign that had been demolished by bulldozers. The original sign was just a post listing 9 cities and their mileage. When Lindley remade the post, he added is hometown.
From that small sign post back in 1943, the sign forest has grown to include signs from almost every corner of the world. There were thousands upon thousands of signs and I even found a license plate from my home state of New York, pictured here on left. The plate reads, "PINECOOL"
So, just an FYI, if you happen to find yourself traveling on the Alaskan highway in the Yukon and find yourself 30 miles out of the way for gas in a little town called Watson Lake, make sure you have something to contribute to the Sign Forest. If only to say that you've been there and done that! Unfortunately, I did not have anything to leave for the sign forest. This might be a future trip to consider.....
We left Watson Lake a little bit on the later side of the morning. We knew we would be stopping in Whitehorse for the night and that was only 8 hours away. So we took our time on our drive and stopped to capture pictures we may never be able to see again.
Not that I wouldn't want to come back to the Yukon. I would actually make the drive again, however, it would have to be closer to tourist season when things are open: June, July, August. As soon as Labor Day is over, the Yukon begins to shut things down.
Teslin was the first town that we came across on the way to Whitehorse. I use the word "town" very loosely. It was more like a stop. They had a gas station and a souvenir shop. The gas station was open, the souvenir shop was not. Very disappointed..
As we drove down closer, we had to stop and get some shots of the river and the bridge. The river was so reflective and with the intense blue sky presenting itself inside the clear, still water, it was picture time!
The bridge was interesting too. With seven archways expanded over the Teslin River, it presented itself quite magnificently. This grand structure, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, reminded us that there was civilization... at least, somewhere.
One last shot of the Teslin River and we were off to go explore some more of the Yukon.
Driving through the Yukon was very lonely. I know that I had company with me, but I felt very alone. At times, I just wanted to be done with driving through this place.
There were long stretches of road with no civilization to speak of. It was desolate and depressing. Not to mention the despondency of being down to a quarter of a tank of gas, passing 4 gas stations that are all closed, not seeing another car in hours and not knowing where the next gas station might be. As beautiful as the Yukon is, it can also be scary.
Our only saving grace was that we had great weather. It was not unbearably cold and for the most part there was little to no snow on the ground. Someone "up there" must like us! I guess it's nice to know that we have friends in high places.
Our last stop of the day was Whitehorse, Yukon Territory in Canada. It was a relief to finally come across this town. We knew it was a bigger town according to locals in Watson Lake and we knew there was gas. We found quite a nice hotel compared to others we had been in during our trip through British Columbia. In fact, it was a Ramada Inn, which we were very familiar with being we have those in the states.
To our surprise and delight, Whitehorse was a large town. They had a Starbuck's, Walmart, Pizza Hut, A&W, Boston Pizza, Tim Horton's and a few other names I knew. Population... 23,276! Whoa! What! That was surprising. I understand this is the capital and all, but after driving hours with nothing, this was a complete astonishment!
So we took a short drive to Walmart to buy me a winter coat, because the weather began to get much colder, then enjoyed some pasta over at Boston Pizza, and got settled into the Ramada Inn for the evening. All in all, the 8 hour drive from Watson Lake was not bad.
This was our second night's stay in the Yukon. Although we had map's available for the first part of the trip, it was after our second night after leaving Whitehorse where we went off the map for the rest of trip through the Yukon. Try as we might, and believe me, we looked everywhere, we could not find a map that accounted for the missing pieces of the two maps we had. So our second day in the Yukon we stayed off the grid until we finally hit Tok, Alaska.
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