Where else can you help be part of Sasquatch reporting, get a Canadian Maple Leaf tattoo from a Royal Canadian Mounted Police [RCMP] aka “Mountie”, while dodging moose and Brown bear. All the while the grill of your car is collecting an outrageous diversity of insects, especially dragonflies and looks like a prop from one of the “Saw” horror movies.
DAY 1. July 1.
Leaving Anchorage in the rain after a stretch of beautiful weather that recorded the most days of sun in the month of June ever recorded in Anchorage.
This is of course because I was leaving and the gods were Weeping…don’t believe me? I left Prague and in case you didn’t read the papers the Bohemian Deities wept so much that the Vltava River flooded and spilled into Old Town Prague. You might point out the flooding was from rapid snow melt in the mountains in the Czech Republic along with some rainfall but then you would be leaving out a MAJOR variable in your scientific and logical analysis…it’s all about me! HHEEEELLLOOO [why is that so hard for some people to get…jeesh]
So driving up the Glen Highway there were Cow moose and their little baby calves which always elicit an “awww” no matter how tough a guy you think you are. The vistas were long, the skies parted and blue sky reigned once I slipped in a Road Trip collection of music from my buddy Jim. I saw very few cars and most of them were inbound to Anchorage and they were almost all exclusively RV’s and campers.
Having lived most of my life in Maine I’m pretty well-trained to scan the roadsides for Moose [in AK add caribou] who seem to move slow until they decide to walk into the road right in front of you. Deer seem to turn and run…moose seem to want to vector right in on you and then they like to run ON the road because it’s easier going. In Maine onetime on a dirt road a bull moose trotted in front of me for a mile or two…Watching a pair of moose testicles swinging in front of your windshield for a mile or two rapidly changes from a snicker/guffaw/snort to a “oh dear God, give me some knitting needles to stick in my eyes now!’
Long stretches of road with no one in sight in either direction. At first seeing another car elicited a “go away” response…by Day Two it felt comforting because by now I am “out there” and nothing is close.
The last “town” leaving Alaska is Tok—and yes it’s pronounced as if you were doing a doobie/splif/bone. In the gas station was this flyer for reporting Sasquatch sightings…maybe there is something to the name “Tok”.
There certainly was enough smoke outside of Tok. Numerous wildfires were burning, the smell of smoke was heavy in the air, warning signs to keep your headlights on as the road could get dark and smokey at a moments notice. Helicopters were churning the air with their rotors flying low over the road as they dropped bucketful’s of water on the fires that ground crews could not access.
In Alaska the road was pretty good….parts of gravel that put a lot of dust in the air, road construction that had traffic backed up in some spots but mainly is was long lonely stretches of road rewarded with sweeping vistas of sharply rising mountains, rivers, glaciers, and wildlife. Pretty cool.
The came the Yukon…or lets be fair and say the first 20 miles of entering Canada…OH MY GOD do you hate us?! It was the worst section of road I have ever seen that was “under construction”… potholes that could swallow my car, sections of gravel that could more accurately be called small boulders. It sucked—that’s a Department of Transportation official term by the way.
At one section I was down to 20 mph following some RV’s. Normally I would have wanted to launch a shoulder-fired missile and cackle like a mad scientist as it blew skyward but in this case when they would do a BIG BOUNCE I knew something was up and could crawl through the section. Did I mentioned that it SUCKED?
Once I hit the border station which actually lies 20 miles INSIDE Canada right at Beaver Creek ,where I stayed for the night, the road got a little better. It was a much longer day than I expected…9 hours when it should have been 7 at the most…assuming good roads…
Beaver Creek, Yukon. Canada Day [their 4th of July]. Apparently I missed the parade in the morning and the person checking me in just gave me a blank stare when I asked if we could do it again tonight. You know. For me. [Please see paragraph three for a reminder].
I looked at the front of my car and t looked like a scene from a horror movie…seems like some of those beautiful dragonflies in their swarms along the highway didn’t all make the slipstream of the car. I like dragonflies, they eat mosquitoes. I felt bad.
Beaver Creek is wwaaayyy out there and other than being a border town and catering to those traveling the Alaska Highway there isn’t much there. However the Westmark Tok hotel had a “Follies” they put on every night in the summer [big doings!] so there was a bus tour enjoying that which also seemed to employ the entire town.
Including one of the Mounties at the RCMP station, Officer Friendly. He was friendly and I got some temporary Maple Leaf tattoos. There has been much speculation amongst my kids as to where I put the tattoo [any tattoo for that matter-I love Canada]
Day 2. July 2.
On the road O’dark early for a relatively short day—6 hours of driving–to Whitehorse, capital of the Yukon. Saw a Brown bear foraging so that made getting an early start worth while.
The roads were still lousy though not as bad as the first 20 miles. The ALCAN was built on permafrost and as those areas of the road thaw and re-freeze instead of the “frost heaves” we would get in Maine the road would undulate with troughs and crests. Some were intense and could launch you, others you felt yourself drop into…no going more than 50mph so you could brake in time for the really bad ones.
I learned that when I was going over some of the muskeg type lowlands with their stunted spruce the undulation would be more pronounced. When they cut the road into the sides of mountains the road was less susceptible to vagaries of the permafrost undulations. I’m learning.
South of Burwash Landing not only were the views amazing, along with the $6++ dollar gallon of gas, the road dramatically improved. Better than in Alaska…in fact it was fantastic and my little Audi A6 put her back into it.
Whitehorse fell right into place. Located on the shores of the rapidly flowing Yukon River Whitehorse is the capital city for the Yukon and seat of Government. The famous Klondike Gold Rush of 1896-1899 put Whitehorse really on the map though the natives had been coming to the area for countless generations as part of their nomadic cycle
From Wikipedia:
The Klondike Gold Rush, also called the Yukon Gold Rush, the Alaska Gold Rush, the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush and the Last Great Gold Rush, was a migration by an estimated 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1896 and 1899.
Gold was discovered here on August 16, 1896 and, when news reached Seattle and San Francisco the following year, it triggered a “stampede” of would-be prospectors. The journey proved too hard to many and only between 30,000 and 40,000 managed to arrive. Some became wealthy; however, the majority went in vain and only around 4,000 struck gold. The Klondike Gold Rush ended in 1899 after gold was discovered in Nome, prompting an exodus from the Klondike.
Whitehorse is a modern town/city with all the services you could want…including gas at least in the $5 dollar range…
It is said that if you “pee” in the Yukon you are no longer “Cheechako”. I am sure the good citizens of Whitehorse have laws against any sort of public urination and I support them. I am, however, no longer Cheechako.
enough for now…next two days will be long with tomorrow at Liard Hot Springs Lodge and then the following day in Fort Saint John…
Looking out the window of the plane it struck me that to navigate such treacherous terrain must take incredible skill. This prompted me to think if I was stranded on Denali 
Who would I want to rescue me? Who would YOU want to rescue you?
Geared out Mountain Rescue Guy who probably read all the Sargent Rock comic books he could get his hands on as a kid, attends every Wilderness Rescue program and training there is, and has a name like “Lance”, “Tor”, or [you fill in the blank-you know what i’m going for…]. OR;
a Czech woman in high heels.
is that Czech women have the amazing talent and gift of being able to navigate like Mountain Goats over cobblestone 
on the streets and sidewalks in boots that have impossibly high heels and
1.) not break their ankles; 2.) look stunningly fabulous; 3.) Sashay themselves along cobblestone effortlessly whilst I, in my regular shoes, am constantly twisting my ankle and observing that most males in Prague have a tendency to walk into buildings and lampposts whenever a czech woman walks by in her heels. So clearly Option B is the best as she would be able to scamper up the mountainside and throw you over her shoulder and take you to safety long before Mr. Mountain Man is strapping on his carabiners and setting his pitons…plus she most likely has lip balm which you’ll probably need… Mystery solved!
A Yankee in Alaska goes to Prague 