Day Twenty-Nine - Haines Junction to Teslin, YT

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Holding my breath, I pressed the bottom of the rocker switch to retract the bedroom slide. It came in flawlessly. One down, one to go. After making sure everything was ready for travel I pressed the identical button to bring in the living room slide. I suppose it's really a dining room or kitchen slide because it houses the dining booth and pantry. Regardless, I pushed the button and the slide came in as if nothing happened last night. Yay! Wish we could figure out why the circuit keeps tripping.

We only had a 200 mile drive today so mid-afternoon was our ETA. It always depends on road conditions and stops. Because of that, Teri adds two hours onto whatever Google maps shows as an arrival time. She's been pretty close every time.

We were toolin' along, taking in the scenery, discussing over the walkie-talkies about how to incorporate a trip to an interpretive center on the way when suddenly there was a small band of horses hanging out on the sandy shoulder. There were about eight or ten of various colors from bay to chestnut to dark brown. Most were just standing there, one was rolling trying to scratch its back. There was even a youngster among them. That was pretty amazing to see! And naturally we were going too fast to stop and get pictures so you'll just have to take my word for it.

While I was adding to my notes about the horses, Mike saw something crossing the road way up ahead of us. I looked up to see the shape of a large dog, tail down behind it, trotting across the road. By the time we reached where it had crossed it was long gone down into a ravine and the safety of the trees. I'm pretty sure it was a wolf.

We've driven through part of this area before. On our way north we stopped for the night in Whitehorse. Yesterday I said we deviated from the Alaska Highway at Watson Lake. The original plan was to go north out of Watson Lake on Yukon Highway 4 to Faro, but we couldn't get confirmed lodging so we rerouted and went west on Yukon Highway 1 through Whitehorse. Since we were driving through again, we decided to stop at the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Center on our way to our next RV park. It was on our list of "Want to Do," but it was too far from the campground to go back after getting set up; much like our round of golf in Fairbanks.

The parking lot was nearly empty when we arrived. They really didn't want anybody speeding in there. Like-new bolt-in rubber speed bumps were everywhere making it almost as bad as some of the roads we've had to maneuver except having to go up and over instead of down into. It was warm out and we didn't want to leave the dogs in the trucks. We took turns going in to see the exhibits as had become our habit. When Teri and I went in the docent was talking with a man, explaining the ice ages and natural global warming and cooling and the rise and fall of different animal species this big rock we live on has experienced in its lifetime. The center focused on the period of time when the northern ice mass grew and froze the ocean. The water receded and exposed the continental shelf connecting Alaska and Russia. The land bridge was much larger than I thought. I had always thought it was only between the Seward Peninsula and the Russian peninsula on the other side of the Bering Strait. At its widest in history, the exposed land stretched from the northern coast of Alaska and the Yukon down to Unimak Island in the Aleutian chain, over to the northeastern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula and up well into the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of far eastern Russia. The docent suggested we begin our tour of the center in a room off the main exhibit area where a short video played on a loop. The video explained the theorized history of the land bridge. Other exhibits included fossils and skeletons of ancient animals, a depiction of how the first humans may have lived and hands-on exhibits with replica bones and teeth. One of these hands-on exhibits had a replica molar from an Asian Elephant, African Elephant, Mastadon and Woolley Mammoth. In comparing these it appeared to me that the Mammoth and Asian elephant were closely related and the Mastadon and African elephant were closely related. I was partially wrong. The similarities in their molars had to do with their diet more than DNA. The Asian Elephant and Mastadon are/were both strictly grass eaters whereas the African Elephant and Mastadon included twigs and branches, bushes and bark in their salads. I was sharing my thoughts with the docent who then pointed to a family tree of the four species. It showed the Asian Elephant and Mastadon are closer related to each other than to either of the other two. The African Elephant branched off about a million years before and the Mastadon chose the path less traveled about 20 million years before that. The next time you go to a museum or interpretive center or even a visitor center, talk with the people who work or volunteer there. They'll likely shed light on your wonderings.

Anyway, when Teri and I finally exited Charlie of course got all happy. He's such a mama's boy. We made the same recommendation to Dave and Mike about watching the short video prior to exploring the center. While they were inside Teri and I took the dogs and explored the trail that wandered through the trees between the parking lot and the center. There were a few signs posted about the plants we saw and what animals may have inhabited the area millions of years ago. The trail led back to the parking lot where three large bronze statues stood. They were of a male, female and baby Mammoth. As we walked the main walkway back to the portico I saw some huge mushrooms! I had to stop and take a few pictures. We went back to sit in the shade and offer the dogs some water. Eventually Charlie became bored and started "rawr"-ing. If I ignored him, the "rawr" would become a bark, and it did. This time Mr. Rawr-Rawr and I walked to another exhibit and looked around. This one was outside, next to the building and depicted the layers of a riverbank and what archeologists might encounter on a dig in the area. As we walked back to the cool of the shade I could hear Mike and Dave talking wiyh Teri. We were all ready to make our way back to the trucks. Next to the walkway between the center and parking lot was a bronze statue of a giant beaver. Those things could have taken down some pretty sizeable trees! I'd love to see the size of lodge they would have needed. The average person would probably have been able to sit or crouch comfortably, maybe even stand.

Next door to the Interpretive Center was the Yukon Transportation Museum. On their grounds were an old river boat, a Canadian Pacific Air Lines plane and several tractors. It could have been another interesting place to tour, but time was short and we still needed to get to the campground.

During the remainder of our drive we passed Marsh Lake. It seemed to go on and on. We landed at our layover around dinner time which seems to be the norm most days. After dinner I finally got around to putting up our window sticker. Looks great from the inside. Can barely see it through the layer of dust and dirt over the tinted window from the outside.

That's it for today. We'll talk again tomorrow. Just a handful of one-night stands left on the calendar on the drive home.

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