July 11 - 16 British Columbia & the Yukon

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July 11 - Dawson Creek, BC July 12 – Tetsa River, BC July 13 – Watson Lake, Yukon Territory July 14-15 – Whitehorse, Yukon Territory July 16 - Tok, Alaska

The Alaskan Highway officially begins at Dawson Creek; “Mile 0” and ends at Delta Jct, Mile 1422. Naturally, we started at Dawson Creek. Our first day we saw 3 kinds of bear, lots of deer, moose, caribou, long horn sheep, mountain goats and lots and lots of rabbits.

There are lots of bright yellow canola fields in the plains of Alberta and British Columbia. Then, in the mountains, there's lots of beautiful green lakes and water falls.

Welcome to Yukon
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We stopped for the night at Tetsa River. This was owned and operated by a three generation family. They had about 8 RV spots and a generator that they shut off at 10:00PM and turned back on at 7:00AM. Very remote, reminded me of Colombia.

The next day we saw only foxes. We passed into the Yukon Territory. The Yukon has a total population of less than 30,000 and 22,000 live in Whitehorse. So the rest of it, being so sparsely populated, means that you can drive for miles and miles and not see another human. Truly a wilderness.

fox
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We spent the night at Watson Lake. They have a very interesting park, about a city block in size, with sign posts and license plates from all over the world; lots from Texas. That was fun to walk through.

We spent a couple of days in Whitehorse. We played golf, first golf course I ever played that had switch backs on the cart path, and oh, by the way, I beat Dwight in both holes and strokes. We hiked along the Yukon River, walked over the bridge at Miles Canyon, went to the fish ladder (the salmon were at Dawson City working their way upstream), visited a 100 year old log church, and had dinner at The Klondike Rib and Salmon BBQ. The electricity went out in the entire town for almost an hour, so we waited in line before they would seat us until the power came back on. Just like Plano on a Friday night.

Miles Canyon Bridge
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While walking along the Miles Canyon, we met a teenage boy and his Dad. The boy had his bathing on so I asked him if he was thinking of jumping and he said YES, he did it everyday. What a treat. The canyon was about a 40-50 feet drop, the water about 50 degrees, and the current very swift. His dad said he was a high adrenalin, type A kid and would be doing drugs if he wasn’t doing this. When the kids came back up, we asked him what he did for fun in the winter. His dad said he was the top snow boarder in the Yukon. We may see him in the Olympics some day.

Dawson Creek - Mile 0 of the Alaskan Highway
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We do meet some very interesting people along the way. We brought a case of Josh McDowell’s little book, More Than a Carpenter, to pass out as we go, praying God will use it to speak to some. Christ is the only mediator between God and man, those are His words, not mine, and that’s really all you ever need to know.

On Sunday afternoon, July 16, we crossed the US border into Alaska. Always good to be back in the great US. We drove to Tok, a one restaurant town that makes good blueberry pancakes. We probably won’t order the reindeer sausage again.

couple of moose - or is it meece?
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Blessings to all!

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