#1 Yukon trip

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Trip Start May 24, 2008 Trip End Jun 2009 Next
Entry

  Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada
Friday, May 30, 2008

             Day 1 and 2 May 25 and 26/08  
Finally,.... got on the road on Sun May 25 just before noon. Sue and Doug Gudwer put on a going away party. on the Fri night. I really think it was a Go Away party as we had been talking forever about this trip!!! Lots of our good friends were there to see us off.
We were up at 6 AM doing the final clean on the house.
Glenn and Carole fed us breakfast and Carole came over and finished cleaning the basement (what a woman!Group Hug!!!)
It was still raining a bit as we pulled out with the blue sky breaking out. After 5 days of rain and our trying to get organized it was a bit of a rough time.
 
So why the Frig are we leaving such a great area?
We certainly asked ourselves that many times throughout the last month.
The short answer is because we can. We're now both retired and still physically able to do this.
I think you probably have to be old enough to understand that sentiment.
Why Whitehorse?  A longer answer will be in this blog but the short answer is because we like the North and the people who live there.
 
So we are now ON THE ROAD!!!!!!
We drove up to Jasper through rain showers. But fresh snow on the peaks more than made up for it.
On to Hinton and north up Hwy 40 towards Grande Cache and on to Grande Prairie.
Night # 1 was at the Tamarack campground just south of GP. As a side note, we just about didn't make it past Grande Cache as a young woman travelling at excessive speed lost control of her car on a curve as she came towards us, and slide off the road right behind us. She slid off backwards into a soft ditch and the only damage was to her car. If we had been any slower...
 
 
Day 2:  We got under way 10:30 and got to mile 0 (zero) in Dawson Creek. Just beyond at Km 27.8 is the Keskatinaw Bridge. This is the last remaining wooden bridges on the Alaska Hwy. It's actually on the old road but it's really quite cool in that the bridge is not straight but was built with a 9 degree bend. It's made of pressure treated Fir. It was last used in the 70's and was replaced by a larger steel bridge on the new improved road.
The Alaska Hwy itself is in great shape. Over the years since 1942 it has been improved and straightened. There are a few frost heaves but it's in much better condition than we've seen in northern MB.  The traffic was heavy with oil patch trucks around Dawson and Fort St. John but once further north the traffic is light.
I was thinking my Mom and Dad would have loved this trip.
 
Night 2 and we're in Fort Nelson. We're finding our definition of RV park is quite different from what we've found. A gravel parking lot with water, sewer, and hydro passes for an RV park, plus the $30/night. We looked at all three parks here in Ft Nelson and picked the one that at least has trees. It also has BIG honkin' mosquitos.
Got to get the tent attachment organized (another project that didn't get done before due to the rain.)
Cedar is not impressed with sleeping with the bugs.
 
Day 3 :Off at 8:00 AM  I take it back about the MB roads. Road now is wash board and broken gaps.
What great views!  We worked our way up through Summit Pass and Muncho lake area. Next time we will work our schedule to end up there. What great views. It was really cool to go through different zones of Spring. We would find full on leaves then go up through a pass only to find the leaves barely coming out. Still lots of snow up high and all the rivers and streams were in full flood. They were dirty and full of trees, stumps etc.  lots of animals to see as well. We saw moose, deer , fox, stone sheep, caribou, and black bears.
Bonus time for us in that we did get to Liard hot Springs by noon and the temp was +29C.
We decided to stop for the day and do a soak. Really a great place with a grewat provincial campsite. There is an 'RV' site across the road so most of the big 'units',stayed there and we had more of the down to earth folks on our side.
We met three different couples that were on the road. There were two German families that seem to spend most of their summers in the north and an American couple from Alaska in a big RV They had sold their home and lived in texas for the winter and back to AK for the summer.
we've made tentative plans to meet one of the German couples for the solstice in Dawson where he is going to hang glide off the Dome at midnight. He wants to be able to say he started a flight on one day and ended it on the next.
 
Day 4:
Off to Whitehorse. Arrived 6:00 pm. Just north of Liard HS is home to two huge herds of Buffalo. We only saw three but they were impressive!! We stopped at the source of the Yukon River to get our feet wet.
We're camped at the High Country RV park just outside WH. Close to the hwy and near the airport so not exactly wilderness camping but close to all we need along with WIFI. Almost everyone on the road has a laptop and every RV park needs WIFI to attract the clientele. This ain't a canoe trip Toto!!!!
 
Day 5:
This AM we hooked up with three old friends from my Canada Winter games time up here.
We met Gerry Kuhn and Margaret Donneley for breakfast. We also looked up Cheryl Smith my billet from the Games as well. These are really good folks and we hope to spend some time with them.
We also bottled wine today. They have a U Brew up here and we called them back in Feb to start two batches of wine for us. We got a friend to 'start' the wine by putting the yeast on it and today we went in and bottled the wine in < 1h.  So now we have good wine for the start of our adventure.
We also went out to the home where we will be staying. What a great place on three acres, 12 minutes from DT.
We have to get our huge wooden crate shipped there from town but when we called the shipping company, the crate had only arrived in Edmonton today so we won't see it until next week. So much for two day delivery which is what I was told by the Calgary shipper. LOL!
We are now sitting down and taking stock of all our gear and are prepping for our canoe trip. The biggest PITA is that we can't remember where we put things, so will have to tear the truck apart to find all our stuff. All the rush to get ready and the packing seems a long time ago but so is the memory of where the f.... the stuff sacks are?
BTW the days are still getting longer and it really is weird to going to bed in the light and waking up to the sun.

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