Land of the Midnight Sun

By the way, If you ever make this trip, I highly suggest you plan to bypass the town of Watson Lake. Suffice to say, it’s a dump. That opinion may be influenced by the hotel I stayed in and the lousy internet connection. I heard from Lucy about this and she enjoyed her stop here. After leaving Watson Lake, I stopped at a great place for breakfast, called Nugget City, with a pretty cool gift shop and a great café: the Wolf It Down Café. Thanks again to Bryan for loaning me his copy of “Milepost.” It is THE bible for travelers in the North, particularly the Alaska Highway. It has every possible thing in it, mile by mile. That’s how I decided to have breakfast at Nugget City.

My next destination was Whitehorse, on the Yukon River. This is one of the towns of all the gold rush stories of the Klondike, along with Skagway and Dawson City. The towns of the Jack London adventure tales and the old movies. I finished “Call of the Wild” the day before, so I’ve been listening to “White Fang,” the story of the wild wolf/dog. Perfect timing. The dog grows up along both the Mackenzie and Yukon Rivers. (Did I say I love that stuff??) :)

I had been thinking about spending the night in Whitehorse after wrestling with the crummy internet connection in my room in Watson Lake. I thought I could get a hotel with a good internet connection there since it is the capitol of the Yukon Territory. I also thought I might enjoy a few drinks at what surely would be some old throwback to the wild old mining day type bars. Well, Whitehorse has no bars except in the hotels!!! I guess they’ve just changed that law and bars will be able to open there again. A woman I asked about a bar told me that they had the hotel/bar law because it gets so cold in the winter that they had to provide a place for people to sleep when they get too drunk. Can’t have those drunks freezing to death in the streets! Disappointed, I decided to keep on moving down the highway. I made it to an area called the Kluane. It is a beautiful, remote place along the Saint Elias Mountains, which are the tallest mountains I have seen since leaving Jasper.

I found a campsite on Kluane Lake and I’m sitting on the shore of the lake writing this at 10:30 at night and it’s very light out. It’s a very peaceful evening and I’m listening to the ice crack on the lake as I write this. I’m also swarmed by mosquitoes. Thank God for Cutters Advanced. I probably have only gotten 3 or 4 bites so far. The lady running the campsite said that this is a heavy Grizzly area. I think I'll sleep in the truck again.

And the weather. Again a gorgeous day with high of 78 in Whitehorse. Jan’s been checking the Anchorage and Fairbanks weather in the paper every day and keeps telling me it’s in the 70’s there. I told her I came here to get away from the cold in Chicago.

One more tip for potential travelers here. There is no radio that penetrates the depths of the wilderness I’m traveling through. You better bring a lot of cd’s or an iPod with you.

I traveled over 400 miles today and have surpassed the 4,000 mile mark. That’s it for tonight. I’m going to have one more Molson Canadian and look at the sun on the mountains.

By the way, I woke up at 5:30 AM and it is just as light as it was at 11:30 PM. I woke up at 3:00 AM and it was still so light you could read the Tribune. The longest daylight will be 6/21. The land of the midnight sun indeed.

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Part of trip: Alaska or Bust

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