Blogs from Haines Junction, Yukon, Canada, North America

SEPTEMBER 5 … yesterday and today have both been joyous days with cloudy-foggy-rainy weather … great alaskan weather, however, not conducive to photography, thus ansel adams and his sister marilyn won’t be sharing any pictures … plus that we have no wi-fi, though this campground advertises wi-fi … SATURDAY … we drove the first 35 miles of the denali highway and as we suspected only far enough on the gravel to turn around … the denali highway is above the tree line and tundra … we saw hunters everywhere but nary a caribou … the tundra was in purple and reds … as we suspected the blueberry bushes give the tundra that purplish color in the early fall … even with a papacy of sun it was stunningly beautiful … it is difficult to describe … ... read more

DAY 11 … yesterday was fabulous … driving in the mountains of British Colombia all day … the roadside vegetation has been cut back about 50 yards from the center line … this was done, we suspect, for the major purpose of protecting wildlife … our three eagle eyes only spotted 1 caribou yearling along side the road eating dirt … perhaps they salt the road in the wintertime as we figure the yearling was really after salt … Last night we camped at laird hot springs provincial park … it is a 600 meter walk back to the hot springs on an elevated wooden walkway … the water ranged from hot 130 degrees in the hot end to a comfortable 105 below the waterfall … I hope to post pictures … if we have a ... read more

Well, we're now in the Kluane National Park (it's pronounced "Clue Arnie", in case you were wondering!). And blooming marvelous it is too. But before we get to that... Since I last published a blog, we spent a couple of days in the capital of the Yukon, Whitehorse. A surprisingly nice little town given that it's in the middle of nowhere. The town is sort of on two levels. The downtown area is at the bottom of the hill next to the Yukon River. The remainder of the town is on the top of the hill above it. Needless to say that our RV park was on the top of the hill. So we decided to cycle down into town; with a Force 10 gale helping us. Which was all very well, until we needed to ... read more

Tuesday, Really nice weather today, though really windy this afternoon. Finally got to see some wildlife today - - one coyote, several swans, including two adults that we saw on the way up with 4 signets that hatched since we came by on the way up, and bright iridescent blue dragon flies. The coyote was a female that had obviously just had a litter - - she was on the road begging for a handout. We also had really nice vistas of high mountains in the distance - - tough to get good pictures, but we tried. We had several delays due to construction and one stretch when we had to follow a motor grader doing ALMOST 5 mph for a couple miles (seemed more like 5 miles!) At one of the construction sites in the ... read more