A good night using the warm laundry room to sit and do
blogs etc, and the wifi to post everything and get up to date – at last !!
Fine when we woke up, so packed up, had a chat to some
other campers also en route to Alaska, and then went over to the local bakery for
breakfast. By then it was getting a bit
late so we set off north (on the infamous Alcan Highway for the first time)
towards Beaver Creek in the Yukon.
It was fine and clear when we set off, and after a while
we came to Kluane Lake, which is an enormous body of water, most of which was
still frozen. We stopped beside it and
had a play on the ice – I reckon in one photo Janet looks as though she could
be in the Antarctic !!! The ice has an amazing crystalline structure, and it
goes quite deep into the water. In some
places it is water on the surface, but you can see the ice crystals quite
clearly underwater. And there were big
“crests” of ice along the shore where the wind had driven the ice up.
We then went further around the lake a went into the
Parks Information office, which was excellent.
Apart from a bear skin which Janet sat in and compared hands / claws
(?!), the girl there gave us a lot of information about the lake, the local
glaciers and ice field up in the mountains, and stories about glaciers
“surging” – That is when they can literally move long distances almost over
night. And outside, high up on the
mountain side, through binoculars we could clearly see several groups of the
amazingly agile Dall Sheep grazing.
As can be seen from the photos, the clouds were starting
to come down the mountain, and it was only about 4 deg C, yet we saw a couple of
girls in a layby wearing shorts and flip flops ! When we commented to them, they said they were
from Alaska, and used to it !
Hmmmm.
Not far up the road, we stopped at a museum at Burwash
Landing, which was the sight of one of the first trading posts in the area at
the end of the 1890’s. The museum was
excellent, with some great displays of all the animals to be seen in the area,
and we thoroughly enjoyed it. They also
had the (apparently) largest gold pan in the world outside !!
We passed though large areas of dead black spruce,
apparently caused by a beetle. It is
killing a lot of the spruce, which is being replaced naturally by poplars. Then we suddenly saw a moose – Janet’s
first. Normally they run away, but this
one hung around for a while before he headed bush. No antlers at this time of year, but you can
just see the buds of his new rack just starting to grow – They will be full
grown by about September.
Then not 10 minutes later, we spotted a black bear beside
the road. We were outside the car taking
photos when he started to approach a bit too close ! So I leapt into the car, only to find Janet
wasn;t in there !! I have a video of it,
which I will try to post up and give you the link, because it is quite
hilarious. I am wondering where Janet is, meanwhile she got so excited she
pressed the off button instead of the record button as the bear approached, and
can be heard muttering in the back ground as the bear passes on the other side
of the car ! But I honestly thought he
was going to jump up on my driver’s door and have a look in – Despite the
camera bouncing around a bit, I did manage to keep it running !!
Soon after that, the rain started, and it turned pretty
wet as we approached Beaver Creek. There was one beautiful section where amidst
all the cloud and rain, the sun was shining on a tall snow covered mountain in
the distance, which made for quite a dramatic sight. I decided that due to the rain, we would try
to get a little cabin at Buckshot Betty’s where I stayed 2 years ago, but on
arriving there we found they were fully booked, so we had to go to an RV park
next door. The rain held off while we
set up camp, and we had a great dinner and a few Amber Ales at Buckshot
Betty’s, before heading back to the van. The photo of the radio aerial with the
sun just poking through the clud was actually taken at 9.30 pm as we headed
back to the van – There is only about 4 hours of real darkness now.
Pics for the day are here :- https://picasaweb.google.com/117739775480775657932/0016HainesJctToBeaverCreek?authkey=Gv1sRgCI36867d7MHqfQ#
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