Alaska Highway, Day 7: Liard River, BC to Haines Junction, YT

(cross-posted to http://1lap.tumblr.com)

Today: ~500mi from Liard River Hot Springs Provincial Park, BC, to Haines Junction, YT

Approximate Route Map:

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Ladies and gentlemen: Yukon, ho! Today we left humdrum, too close to Seattle, British Columbia and entered the frontier: Yukon (formerly the Yukon Territory).

We did not, sadly, have peanut butter, honey, and marshmallow sandwiches in the Yukon.

The directions from Liard River to our motel in Haines Junction were pretty simple: 1) take the Alaska Highway for 497 miles; 2) stop. Looking at a map of the route, you'd think the Alaska Highway is totally desolate, but that's not entirely true. I was expecting stretches of hundreds of miles with no human presence (other than the occasional car, of course). Instead, at most every hundred miles or so there would be some kind of settlement - the largest were towns of a hundred or so people, ranging down to individual lodges. There's also a non-trivial amount of traffic during the summer months. Plenty of RVs and trailers, which can be mildly annoying to deal with in an underpowered car.

That said, it's certainly not like driving down 101 in the Bay Area (or even I-5 down to LA). The Alaska Highway really is quite isolated for much of its length, and this isolation (and proximity to provincial and national parks) supports a large wildlife population near the road. We got very used to seeing warning signs for elk, moose, and bison; we mostly laughed at them until quite a ways in, we saw an entire herd of bison just hanging out by the side of the road:

Hamburger on the hoof

The wildlife on the highway isn't all big game animals, though. Insects of all kinds are present in absolutely astonishing quantities. Our radiator testified to this (to say nothing of the bumper!). It's the first time I've seen TWO dead dragonflies stuck to the front of a car. The first order of business at every gas stop was to clean off the windshield.

Dead bug special coming right up

Our first gas stop of the day was in Watson Lake, YT. We stopped there because it was conveniently timed, and the last marked town on the map for quite some time (implying relatively cheap gas). Completely serendipitously, right across from the gas station we saw a very odd sight: a large collection of signs nailed to posts. Walking closer, we learned that we had stumbled across a well-known sight on the Alaska Highway: the Watson Lake Signpost Forest:

Nathan wanders through the Forest. It's probably 10-20x larger than what you can see in this picture.

The Signpost Forest was started during the original construction of the Alaska Highway, when homesick soldiers building the highway posted signs from their hometowns. It's since become a tradition for passing travelers in the know to put up signs of their passage; the forest has hundreds of posts, most of them completely full, and we saw signs dating as far back as the early 1980s. (It's not clear what happened to older ones - if they didn't exist, or if the typical lifespan is only 20-odd years.)

Sadly, we weren't in the know, so we had no sign to post. We briefly considered leaving a front license plate, but decided against it. Luckily, someone had made a sign for all the signless!

Sign for the signless (click to enlarge)

The Alaska Highway has a few people you'd almost call "regulars"

Signs in the forest are from all over. Most of the population centers in the US and Canada are represented (at least to within 100 miles or so). There were a huge number of Germans and Austrians (for reasons we don't understand), and even one sign from Iran! It took us a while to find good signs in front of which to take pictures of ourselves:

California sign: close enough.

An interesting fact about Watson Lake: because of the way great circle routes curve over the Earth's surface (at least as viewed in a Mercator projection), this city way up north is almost equidistant between New York and Tokyo:

Our lunch stop was at the Rancheria Falls Recreation Site, where we ate our traditional road lunches (PB&J sandwiches, with the J meaning jelly or jerky, depending on preference, and Clementines) and watched the falls. Not as impressive as Iguazu, to be sure, but still very nice - and remarkably mosquito-free.

Rancheria Falls, Yukon

Our evening dinner stop was in Whitehorse: capital of Yukon and the largest city on the Alaska Highway (around 26,000 people). After the thousands of miles of driving prior, seeing tens of people on the streets was a bit of a shock. It seemed crowded (even though, I realized, seeing the same density of people in downtown Mountain View would seem hopelessly empty).

woooo city

Yup, it's a white horse. In Whitehorse.

Dinner itself was at Klondike Rib and Salmon, a Whitehorse institution recommended by both our AAA Tourbook and the road signs on the highway advertising wild game. How could we turn it down, especially with a menu like this?

Bison? Reindeer? Elk? Sign us up.

We shared some salmon dip, reindeer stew, and elk stroganoff. They were excellent, well spiced, and very filling. Also, they had reindeer in them. Reindeer!

Reindeer stew. Rudolph was never before so tasty.

Before leaving Whitehorse, we drove around briefly to see the sights. First was the world's tallest freestanding log cabin, a three story structure that still looks to be occupied (judging from the bikes and recycling containers outside the doors:

Multi-story log cabin condos. Very rustic.

The last stop before leaving town was a gander at the world's largest weather vane:

Weather vane. That's right.

That's right: they took a whole DC-3, mounted it on a rotating joint, and call it a weather vane. They claim that it's so well-balanced that it only takes a 5 knot wind to rotate it. We didn't try to spin it by hand.

A few hours of driving later, we arrived in Haines Junction, a tiny town on the border of Kluane National Park in Canada. Our motel, the Alcan Motor Inn, didn't really have an address. You don't really need one, either. Drive in on the Alaska Highway from Whitehorse. When you arrive in Haines Junction, it's on the left. And just across from it, you'll see the following spectacular view of the mountains in Kluane: