Alaska and the Yukon Part 2

I'm really bad at this blogging stuff aren't I? I never update when I say I will, so now that its 12 days past the time I said "I'll finish up the rest of the trip tomorrow" I'm finally getting around to doing that.

So I left off in Whitehorse, Yukon. Here's a little known fact about Whitehorse. It doesn't snow that much there. I had naively assumed that up in the Yukon Territory there would be snow 24/7 - 365 days of the year. Apparently, Whitehorse is in a pretty dry location, so they hardly get any precipitation, which was interesting to me. Granted, they still get MUCH more snow than I'm used to, but even though the weather had been warming up, we had seen snow throughout our entire trip so far. There was still some snow on the ground in Whitehorse, but no where near as much as anywhere else we visited during the trip. Also, it was cold in Whitehorse, but it was a dry cold, so it was actually a somewhat comfortable cold.

So Whitehorse was a "real" town in my mind. I wasn't expecting to see a Walmart, Starbucks, McDonalds, KFC and a Tim Horton's (a Canadian Dunkin Donuts-type place that I absolutely love) in the Yukon Territory, so I spent most of my time in this "city" amazed by the fact that people live there. Granted, anything a person could need was in this town, and I understand that the town exists in the first place because of the Gold Rush, but I still can't wrap my mind around why people decided to stay there forever. Everything you need might be in the town, but once you leave the town there is absolutely NOTHING for hundreds of miles. Maybe I'm just weird, but that actually seems a little scary to me. Its basically like living in a real town, yet completely cut off from the entire rest of the world. Its odd to me, but hey...people seem to love living there so more power to them I suppose.
So we spent our first day seeing the local sights and attractions. We started at the MacBride Museum of Yukon History where Mr. V got to see some Northern Lights (He was really bummed that it was cloudy for the majority of the time we were up there...except during the day when you clearly couldn't see any Northern Lights. Apparently the Northern Lights would have been really pretty and visible if it wasn't cloudy every night, so he had to settle for some fake ones at the museum.)I was fascinated by Sam McGee's actual cabin which had been moved to the museum location (google Sam McGee if you've never heard the poem - apparently he was a real person, which I didn't know).I was also fascinated by these things:We had been seeing these everywhere throughout both Alaska and the Yukon and we had no idea what they were. Since they were all over the place - large ones, like in this picture and small decorative ones - I figured that they had to be something important. So thanks to this wonderful museum I learned that they are food storage things (they had an actual name that I can't remember offhand). Basically its like an outdoor refrigerator, raised up high so bears and other wildlife can't get into it. This was actually a highlight of the trip because it truly drives me insane when I see something over and over, yet I have no idea what it is. I was so excited to finally learn what these things were so of course I had to get a picture by one.

We spent some time walking around town, and thought that this was pretty cool - The Yukon River, which we had seen completely frozen back at the Arctic Circle, was starting to break up and melt and turn back into a flowing river. According to some local people that we talked to, the melting process isn't very gradual - its actually a pretty fast process. It literally just starts to crack one day, and within a few hours turns back into a normal river . So it appeared that the river decided to start functioning as a river again the first day we were in Whitehorse.
We checked out the SS Klondike, which is one of the original steamboats that carried passengers up the Yukon River to the town of Dawson during the Gold Rush.Some other pictures from Whitehorse:

(the side of our hotel - the Best Western Gold Rush Inn)

(the view from our hotel room, which wasn't anything spectacular...I just wanted proof that it actually looked like a real town...)

(me inside the hotel lobby)

(the elevator at the hotel)

(me with my Royal Canadian Mounted Police moose friend)

(the front of our hotel)

On our second (and final) day in Whitehorse we checked out the Yukon Brewery, which was something that Mr. V wanted to do. I could really care less how beer is made, but after the free tour of the brewery we had the chance to sample all of their beer. And when I say "sample" I mean that they gave us pretty decent sized glasses of each type of beer. I got through 3 glasses and had to give the rest to Mr. V because I was pretty sure I was going to be pretty drunk, at 1:00 in the afternoon, if I kept sampling the beer. I decided at this point that American beer really sucks. I'll drink beer, but its not something that I drink a lot of on a regular basis or particularly love. However, when I was in England about 10 years ago and Paris a few years later, I absolutely loved some of the beer that we drank there. Well, I also loved the Yukon Brewery beer, and have been slowly savoring the case of it that we brought home with us. They don't use preservatives in the beer from this brewery, so its not shipped all over the world. You can only get it in Western Canada and in some parts of Alaska, but I highly recommend if you ever have the chance to try it, then try it...because its good stuff!

On our way out of town we stopped to see the World's Largest Weather Vane, which is made out of an old Canadian Pacific plane. It was a little odd, because I'm not sure what kind of person sits there thinking "Hey! I think I'll make a weather vane out of an airplane!" but I love stumbling across weird things like this. It was a little hard to get a good picture because it was windy and the plane kept moving, but this one was pretty decent. We were trying to get one of us in front of the plane so you could read the "Canadian Pacific" on the side of the plane, but the wind wasn't letting that happen.
Once we were out of Whitehorse, and the last of any real civilization in the Yukon, we headed south on the Klondike Highway on our way back to Alaska, once again enjoying the beautiful scenery the whole way there.
On our drive back to Alaska we discovered another little known fact about the Yukon. We had already learned that we were in a somewhat dry area of the territory, but there's also a desert here! I never would have known that if we hadn't drive right past it. It turns out that its actual the remains of some lake from millions of years ago, that now functions much like a desert. There was a little bit of snow there, but not much, and apparently for most of the year it looks mainly like a desert. So we stopped for pictures because I loved the idea of a picture of me standing in a patch of snow, with sand dunes behind me, with snow covered mountains behind the dunes. This was something we definitely hadn't expected to see up in the Yukon.
We stopped for a picture of the Yukon Welcome sign on our way out of the territory because this sign had a prettier background, of snow covered mountains, to it than the one we took pictures by on the way into the territory. I especially love the avalanche warning sign, behind the Yukon sign in the second picture...
Then we drove through British Columbia for about an hour, until finally ending up back in Alaska.I think this next picture is a pretty good way to describe how much "fun" it was to drive on this particular road. Aside from the insanely bumpy and uneven road, this was another beautiful part of the drive. However, there was a storm coming and we were driving into the sun, so while it looked pretty to my eyes, my camera didn't do a great job taking scenery pictures this time. I only got one or two sort of good pictures.
We were heading towards the town of Skagway, Alaska, which was one of the two starting points for the Gold Rush of 1898. The other starting point was the town of Dyea, which has been completely abandoned, except for a few scattered houses and the cabins that we stayed in for the night. Both towns were next to each other, but there was an inlet and some mountains separating them from each other. Today its easy to drive between the two towns, but during the gold rush years each route offered something different for the gold seekers. Skagway offered the trail via White Pass (which I'm about to post pictures of). Dyea offered the shorter and more well known Chilkoot Trail, but it was steeper and much more dangerous. However, both trails were incredibly dangerous in their own way and even with modern transportation today, they're still pretty scary. Now the main highway runs through White Pass, but the Chilkoot Trail is still a hiking trail. Pictures don't do these trails justice though. I think its one of those things you have to see in person to understand the insanity of it. We stopped briefly at an overlook area in British Columbia on our way to White Pass and took a picture of this sign because the quote describes both options pretty well:The next few pictures are of our drive through White Pass. At the very top of White Pass is the border of British Columbia and Alaska, where we stopped to get some VERY quick pictures because it was colder than you can possibly imagine up here, and keep in mind that we were here at a time when the weather was starting to warm up in this whole area. To put it simply, even driving the White Pass trail was a little insane, and its a main road today. It turns out that we took this trip at a perfect time. Had we gone a week or 2 earlier we would have had to change our plans because White Pass was closed due to numerous avalanches. It had only reopened a few days before we got there. So as I said before, the pictures don't do it justice, but its the best I could do to capture the insane wind, the freezing temperatures and bad road conditions. The white out conditions aren't the result of a bad camera. It was snowing AND the wind was blowing pretty hard, so it made the road almost impossible to see at some points. Driving into the whiteness was a little scary even before we got to the worst part of it. I can't even begin to imagine hiking this trail back in 1898. When you look at the pictures of the Canada/United States border, take note that we don't have a picture of the "Welcome to Alaska" sign. Why? Because an avalanche had knocked it down and it was buried under several feet of snow.(This next picture is of the remains of one of the avalanches that had recently been cleared away)

(the next picture is of some of the snow drifts on the sides of the road)

Some of these pictures of White Pass actually make the area look a little flat. So like I said, the pictures don't do it justice. We're actually at the very top of the mountains at this point, and I wish I had a picture to portray exactly how high up we were and how completely insane the weather was. Since this is the best I could do though, here are more picture of our White Pass crossing (I was seriously afraid that this camper in front of us was going to tip over at a few points on the road.):

During the Gold Rush, the border of the 2 countries was drawn at the very top of the mountain ridges on White Pass and the Chilkoot Trail. I think my pictures going down the mountain into Alaska show the steepness of the road a little better than my pictures going up the mountain to the border do.I mentioned in my first post about the trip that we were on vacation about a week before the true tourist season begins up here. So when we got to Skagway they were testing the train that runs from Skagway to Whitehorse, through White Pass. At some point in history, a train route was laid on the White Pass Trail to make transportation easier and now that same train is used as a tourist attraction. People can ride the train on the same route that people looking for gold traveled.
So we had arrived in Skagway, and once again I'm going to have to stop typing for a while. I'll write Part 3 as soon as I can...which will hopefully be tomorrow!

Alaska and the Yukon Part 1

Let me start by saying that I never once thought of the Yukon Territory as a place to vacation to. In fact, I never gave the Yukon Territory much thought at all. It turns out that its a fantastic place to visit, and combined with a trip to Alaska, I'd have to say that I was actually more impressed with the Yukon than with Alaska.

So far Mr. V has gone on 2 deployments and I've let him pick the pre-deployment trip each time. My theory is that since he's the one who has to deploy, then he can pick the trip. 2 years ago we ended up in the Canadian Rockies. This year we went on a 10 day road trip from Alaska to the Yukon and then back to Alaska. I have always wanted to visit Alaska, but again, the Yukon never crossed my mind. In fact, while I knew that Alaska bordered Canada, I never realized that if you wanted to drive to Alaska from the continental United States, that you had to drive through the Yukon Territory. I guess I always just pictured Alaska being attached to British Columbia (which it is) and nothing else.

I was convinced that Mr. V was absolutely crazy for wanting to do this trip. And couple that with the fact that I talked to a friend of mine who's from Alaska, who told me that the trip wasn't crazy at all, but some of the routes we wanted to drive were routes that she would never drive at that time of the year...due to frequent avalanches. That was a little disconcerting...especially when Mr. V blew off her warnings by saying "whatever...we'll be fine" - because clearly, having never been to Alaska, he knows what he's talking about....

So he was excited about this trip, and I was having my doubts. Both of us were also unsure of exactly how much we would get to see and do while we were there because we were going at time when not all of the tourist attractions, or for that matter, entire towns were open. But since we had no choice as to when to take this vacation we had to make due with what we had. According to numerous people we ran into while up there, we were there just one week before all of the tourists would arrive. Though, according to the locals, we went at the perfect time. Apparently, they don't like the swarms of tourists very much. It turns out that it was a great time to go, because it wasn't super crowded, and while some things were closed, a lot was still open, and that also meant that we didn't have to spend too much time choosing what to see and do because we had time to see just about everything that was open.

So our trip went like this:

We flew to Anchorage and spent two nights there. We visited the area south of Anchorage to see the Portage Glacier and the scenic mountains.From Anchorage we drove to Fairbanks, which was an adventure. Fairbanks is about 300 miles away from Anchorage, and because we were there at an odd time of year, lots of things were closed. Which meant that there wasn't a single open gas station between Anchorage and Fairbanks, so we ended up rolling into town with the gas light on and a ominous digital warning sign flashing "no gas" at us.
Once in Fairbanks we went up to the Arctic Circle. This was something that both Mr. V and I wanted to do - mainly just to be able to say that we went to the Arctic Circle. However, the road to the Arctic is known to be pretty brutal. If you've ever seen the show "Ice Road Truckers", its one of the roads featured on the show - The Dalton Highway or the "Haul Road". We had read a lot of warnings about the road conditions, and about how many rental car companies in the area actually specifically state that you can't drive a rental car on the Dalton Highway. Of course, Mr. V wanted to ignore all warnings and drive ourselves, with our rental car, and just take the risk. The road is kept clear all year long, due to the trucks that drive it back and forth, so its not very snow covered (only in some areas) or icy...its just broken up in pieces with pot holes, and all kinds of ways to run off the road or get a flat tire without having anyone around for miles to help you. I finally convinced him that paying a tour company to take us up there would be much cheaper than what we would have to pay the rental car company if we ended up destroying their car on the trip. Due to the fact that most rental companies state that you can't drive a car up there, insurance won't cover any damage done to the car if you do decide to take the risk. So we went with a tour group, which made me feel much better.

It was an interesting trip. The Alaska pipeline runs the length of the highway from the oil fields at Prudoe Bay at the top of the state by the Arctic Ocean, down to the oil refineries in Valdez at the bottom of the state. I'm not a person who is typically fascinated by things like an oil pipeline, but this thing was pretty amazing to see. Its known as one of the 7 Wonders of the United States and is over 800 miles long. Its built to move side to side to prevent earthquake damage, and overall is just an engineering marvel. I have to admit that I was fascinated by it! So we followed the pipeline up to the actual Arctic Circle. These next pictures are of the Dalton Highway, the highway with the pipeline next to it, the highway pipeline and one of the oil trucks, the frozen Yukon River (I'm completely fascinated by the fact that it can get cold enough to freeze a moving river and actually freeze the waves in motion), Mr. V and me by the pipeline (two pictures to attempt to show the massive size of the pipeline), and finally me at the Arctic Circle.

After our Arctic Circle adventure, we left Fairbanks and stopped for lunch in North Pole, Alaska (the entire town is decorated like a giant candy cane), and stopped in at the Santa Claus house. Christmas is my favorite holiday, so I was loving this place. Mr. V, on the other hand, was not. I was excited that we got to sit in Santa's chair because apparently, Santa was on vacation to a warmer, undisclosed location at the time...

After our brief stop in North Pole, we begin the 4 hour drive to Beaver Creek, Yukon...stopping for gas in the town of Tok, Alaska. This was the first of many towns that fascinated me, simply because of the fact that they were so unbelievably small, and so far away from any kind of civilization. I honestly can't wrap my mind around the fact that people live like this. This general store is the only grocery store within a hundred miles...
And then we finally made it into the Yukon Territory! This is a horrible picture of me but I had to get one of me standing in two countries at once.
And since we never got a "Welcome to Alaska" sign when we flew in, we got one on our way out of Alaska.
Apparently, the Americans and Canadians who designed this border felt it was necessary to cut down a line of trees so we would sure to see the actual line drawn on the border.
We were also interested in the fact that once you leave Alaska, the Alaska Highway (otherwise known as the AlCan highway) goes from a paved road and turns into a pile of gravel in the Yukon, that was quite an adventure to drive on.
And of course we needed a picture of the "Welcome to the Yukon" sign to prove that we really were crazy enough to drive there.
From this point we drove to the border town of Beaver Creek, a town with a total population of 86 people. Its the farthest west community in Canada. The people are strange, but friendly, and one of the only two hotels in town was called Buckshot Betty's - which is where we stayed. If you had told me a year ago that I would be staying in a cabin, at a place called Buckshot Betty's, in the Yukon Territory, I probably would have laughed at you.
I took this picture because this map is a map of the entire town of Beaver Creek. Have I mentioned that I just can't wrap my mind around the fact that people live in towns this small?
The next day we left Beaver Creek and started our drive to Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon.

On the way to Whitehorse, I realized that the Yukon is by far, more beautiful than Alaska - or at least the part that we saw was. I was blown away by the scenery on our drive.
We passed through the tiny little town of Burwash Landing, which has absolutely nothing in it except for beautiful mountains, and the world's largest gold pan.
As we were leaving Burwash Landing, we came across this guy on the side of the road (see my post before this one for more pictures).
We made a brief stop at Kluane National Park for more beautiful scenery.
We drove through Haines Junction, which was a decent sized town, considering where we were (there were maybe 2,000 permanent residents here). This is the place where the Alaska Highway intersects with the highway that runs up to Dawson, Yukon. Dawson was a huge gold rush town, and was where people generally ended up during the gold rush years. (yes I know one of these pictures is of a cemetery, but the view behind it was really pretty.)

We finally made it to Whitehorse, where we spent the next 2 days of the trip. Whitehorse is a real town (it has a Walmart, McDonalds, Starbucks, and other "real" town things), and has a population of about 25,000. At first I was fascinated by the fact that there was a town in the Yukon that had 25,000 people in it. I was thinking "wow thats a lot of people for a place that seems pretty unpopulated. But I was more amazed when I learned that while, yes, there are 25,000 people in Whitehorse, thats also 75% of the ENTIRE population of the whole territory. And its a pretty big territory! Again - I just couldn't wrap my mind around that fact.

But on that note, I've been typing for a while now and since this is already a really long post, I'll leave you with the "Welcome to Whitehorse" picture and finish up the rest of the trip tomorrow.