Day 19: Whitehorse to Almost Beaver Creek

Alaska or Bust

NO PICTURES TODAY-- INTERNET CAN BARELY HANDLE TEXT!

I'LL UPDATE WITH PICTURES TOMORROW.

Today was a driving day with a few stops thrown in along the way.  As you can see from the main picture, the roads were gravel laden, dusty, and under construction for the last leg of the trip.

We took some great video along the road, but unfortunately our stop tonight—the Discovery Yukon Lodgings—has only very weak wi-fi (which as I write this is down, so hopefully they get it working soon), and we have no cell signal at all—nothing, nada, dead.  So, you’ll get some stills but not moving pictures today.  (I’ll try to fit some of today’s video into another post later on down the line.)

We began our day at our little cabin, and then hit the Alaska Highway again bound for the border.  

We hit our first sign for Fairbanks this morning (though we won’t actually be heading there until the end of our Alaska time) and knew we were firmly on our way.

Driving this leg of the Alaska Highway still provided some great scenery.  Unfortunately, we don't have the Internet Speed to Upload them.

Our first stop was at this lake in Kluane (I’d get the name right, but I DON’T HAVE INTERNET TO LOOK IT UP!).  It was huge and went on for miles.

We had to stop and pull over to walk down to the water itself.  We were amazed at how dry it seemed—large portions of the lakebed were dry.

We had more great pictures here-- but again, just too slow.  However, I promise to edit this post tomorrow and at upload the picture of Bob touching water. 

While we were at the lake we ran into two guys traveling from Anchorage to, of all places, Colorado Springs.  And, to make matters more coincidental they had a connection to both Virginia Tech (again brought out by Bob’s VT apparel) and New Jersey.  Very small world!

Moving on, we headed back on the roads to more lovely mountain views like this one that I don't have the speed to upload.

Our next stop was the small, in the middle of nowhere, Kluane Heritage Center—our very favorite type of museum.  It was largely made up of taxidermy—with examples of all the animals we have encountered on our journey so far, and some we have yet to see.  Bob & I are still arguing about which ones we are seeing as frequent road-kill.

The lighting in the museum was a bit strange, so we don’t have any pictures from inside (good thing, because we couldn't upload them anyway).  

After the museum is when the road began to deteriorate, and M started to get quite annoyed with us, and began longing for her nice clean dry garage. 

The problems began when we hit our first Pilot navigated construction zone.  As we approached we saw the last car in line drifting off into the distance, and we got caught at the stoplight for what seemed like forever.  We then got to follow the Pilot Car from Hell—who took to the road like a bat out of hell and could seemingly care less whether those behind her could keep up or not.

This was a long, dusty, completely unpaved stretch (It looked like they were replacing the entire road at once) that also seemed to go on forever.  We finally emerged, and hoped for better roads ahead.

They weren’t too bad, but Bob (who gallantly volunteered to drive this stretch) had to be on constant lookout for frost heaves (large bumps in the road).  Mostly they were marked by bumpy road signs and red flags—but not always.

We all gave a small sigh of relief when our resting place for the night came into sight.

We pulled into our little cabin at Discovery  Yukon Lodgings late in the afternoon. (The cabin is smaller, but the door is taller than the Fuzzy Crocus.)  

The campground is filled with leftover construction equipment from building the Alaska Highway.  Perhaps we'll get some of the pictures Bob took into a future blog.

We’re heading over to the Office to hopefully get some food, and to find an Internet connection that will let us upload this blog.

If you’re reading this, we were successful.

--Lisa