Otter Falls Cutoff to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory

This morning after breakfast, we started our drive up Aishihik Road.  At the start of the road, there was a sign indicating the road was flooded at 25 km.  We continued along the dirt road anyway…what’s a little more dirt on the truck, after all.

We got to one parking area high above the river and looked down to see some flooded areas.

I can’t believe it’s that cold yet.

We finally arrived at the 15 km point on the route, and sure enough, the road was flooded.  We decided it would be best not to continue on since we didn’t have any idea how deep the water was over the road.  We could see no sign of other vehicles crossing, but several had turned around.

We had been hoping to be able to drive just another 2.5 km’s to get to the Otter Falls viewpoint.  As noted in the Milepost, “Otter Falls was once pictured on the back of the Canadian $5 bill, but in 1975 the Aishihik Power Plant diverted water from the falls.  The 32-megawatt dam was built by Northern Canada Power Commission to supply power principally to the mining industry.  Water is still released over the falls during the summer; flow hours are posted.”  There had also been a road sign early on in our drive to watch for bison over the entire length of the road.  So, we missed out on both counts.  We did see numerous patches of mushrooms all along the road.  They didn’t look very edible our opinion.

On our return the Alcan Highway, we headed back toward Haines Junction for a short distance to see the historic Canyon Creek Bridge.

We were going to pull into a rest area for lunch, but there were already several vehicles there.  So, we decided to continue on to Whitehorse and have a late lunch/early dinner in town.  Here, we’re approaching Whitehorse.

We arrived at Pioneer RV Park, took on more fuel at $1.285 per liter, parked and went to the Klondike Rib & Salmon BBQ to eat.  Back at the RV, we finished setting up, did some laundry, and relaxed.  We’ll be here for at least two nights before heading toward Hyder, Alaska.

The Silver Trail and on to Dawson City, YT

 

Our plan for today was to pack our lunch and continue the remaining distance of the Silver Trail.  We started on the trail when we turned off the Klondike Highway at Stewart Crossing yesterday afternoon and stopping in Mayo for the night.  It was below freezing overnight and windy this morning, but we got a fairly early start and started driving northeast toward Elsa and Keno City.

 

One of the prominent sights along the road was Mount Haldane, elevation 6,023 feet.

 

Elsa is on the route to Keno City.  It is now an active mining and reclamation site with no visitor access.

 

 

When we arrived at the town of Keno City, it was still below freezing and we weren’t up to a walking tour of the town.  Here are a couple of photos of historic buildings in town.  This one is the All Saints Anglican Church which is now used as a library. 

 

I found this building to be the most unique in Keno City.  It is called the Beer Bottle House.  This house was moved by Geordie Dobson from Calumet, an abandoned mining town nearby in the late 1960s.  He had bought the Keno City Hotel prior to refunds for glass bottles.  He felt that there was some insulation value in the glass since many of the oldtimers used stacked bottles instead of window panes.  So, he began to layer the bottles around his house.  His project began in 1966 and it took him 4 years and 32,000 “stubby” beer bottles to finish his job.  The house is very warm which is probably helped by 60cm (2 feet) of mortar.

 

Once again, we found that we here to early and the museum and other places of interest were not open yet.  There seems to be a magic date of May 15th before things open in the north, and they’re sticking to that date.  We were back to the motorhome by noon, ate our picnic lunch, packed up and were on the road north.  We were headed for the junction of the Dempster Highway to spend a couple of nights and to be able to explore that road.

 

Once again, our plans changed and we headed for Dawson City figuring that we would just add the extra mileage from there to explore the Dempster Highway.  When we were in Dawson City in 2009, we stayed at Bonanza Gold RV Park and decided that would be a good stop this time.  When we checked in, we asked about when the Top of the World Highway might open and they thought it would be the 17th or possibly the 19th.  Usually it is open by May 15th (that magical date).  We’ll plan on going into town tomorrow and see what we can find out at the visitor center.  We traveled a little over 141 miles today from Mayo to Dawson City in the RV and from Mayo to Keno City and back in the truck was about 65 miles.  We did see some wildlife today, but they were quicker than my camera:  1 moose, 1 bear, and 1 porcupine.

 

Atlin–Tagish–Carcross Scenic Loop

After packing a lunch, we packed what we needed into the truck and started out on our trip for the day on what is called the Atlin – Tagish – Carcross Scenic Loop.  This is a side trip off the Alaska Highway starting at Jake’s Corner and is a 59 mile drive to Atlin.  We returned to the Alaska Highway via the Carcross Loop, a 66 mile drive via Tagish Road to Cross then back to the Alaska Highway.  As we started down the road to Atlin, we followed Little Atlin Lake with some picturesque  mountain views.

 

 

There was a side road with a sign showing binoculars that led us a few hundred feet up a road to a parking area and hiking trail that indicated there were mountain goats in the area.  The sign asked that hikers avoid the area in early May – June.  So, we continued on up the road and looked up to see these 6 mountain goats on the hillside.

 

We arrived at Atlin around noon and drove around a bit to see what was there.  The town was quite a bit larger than what I expected.

 

We saw a couple of interesting houses in town:

 

 

In the middle of town and on the lakeshore, the MV (motor vessel) Tarahne is on display.  It was built in 1916 in Atlin by the White Pass & Yukon Route and carried passengers and freight from Atlin to Scotia Bay until 1936.

 

After leaving Atlin, we continued back to the Carcross Loop.  We were hoping to see some of the Carcross caribou herd, but that didn’t happen.  Ken did notice something in a tree, so we turned around and found this porcupine climbing a tree branch:

 

After watching the porcupine for a few minutes, we continued on and crossed the Tagish River.

 

In our prior trip to Alaska in 2009, we had been through this same route as we drove to Skagway.  However, we had never taken the time to go into the town of Carcross.  This caribou is at the turn off the main road into town.

 

And this is one of the more unique houses we saw in town.

 

This is the historic White Pass & Yukon Route train station.

 

 

It was already a full day of touring, but there was one more thing I wanted to see and that was Caribou Crossing.  Milepost indicates that it is the premier wildlife museum and attractions center.  The displays are to include over 100 Yukon and Ice Age mammals including a life-size woolly mammoth and world’s largest bear.  As we’re finding out, we’re getting to the north country way too early, and it wasn’t open yet.

 

It was a good day with over 240 miles logged onto our pickup.  Wildlife sightings included:  1 coyote, 6 mountain goats, and 1 porcupine.

 

Teslin, YT to Whitehorse, YT

 

We headed north following Teslin Lake to our west for quite a distance.

 

We heard so much about Mukluk Annie’s Salmon Bake prior to our trip in 2009.  Sadly, it was closed then and still is today.

 

After a couple of hours on the road, we approached the Yukon River Bridge about 15 miles before our final destination of Pioneer RV Park in Whitehorse, YT.

 

As we drove into Pioneer RV Park, there was a sign at the driving indicating they were closed.  We continued on and parked by the office.  Soon, the owner drove up on her golf cart and told us if we could do without a water hookup we were welcome to stay there.  She had a place where we could fill our water tank, so we decided to stay a couple of nights so we could do some additional sightseeing in the area.  We ate lunch while filling our tank, and when that was completed found a site and set up for our stay.  Later in the afternoon, we drove into town and got this photo of the iced up Yukon River.

 

There were no wildlife sightings today.  Hopefully tomorrow we’ll see more caribou as we plan to drive a portion of the Atlin – Tagish – Carcross Scenic Loop.

8/29/2009 - Whitehorse, YT Museums and Dinner with Friends

On our last full day in Whitehorse, we decided to tour two museums that offer a discount for going to both of them. The first one we visited was the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Center. It covered time thousands of years ago when there was a land mass between North America and Asia. We found it very interesting and although some of the animals are similar to ones we see now, there are still differences.

This photo is taken from outside the museum.

This photo is of the wooly mammoth which looks very much like a prehistoric elephant.

The next museum was the transportation museum. We first went through a room devoted to bush planes. It was mostly made up of photos covering the history of bush planes.

The next section of the museum covered the gold rush era of the late 1890's when gold was first discovered in the Klondike. It covered all of the main towns which the miners traveled through and their ordeals in getting to the Klondike gold fields.

The final area of the museum had various vehicles that serve the Yukon Territory. This yellow machine is a snow groomer and the quote on the hood caught my eye.


As we left the museum, we saw that the DC-3 weather vane was moving so we stopped to watch it for a while. On our way to Alaska, it was in a different location. During the time we were north, they physically moved the plane to it's new location in front of the transportation museum. I tried making a video of it's movement, but it made me seasick to watch it, so decided not to bother posting it.

Later that evening we went to dinner with fellow Escapees, Diane and Andy, and had a great evening visiting and enjoying their company. Diane and Andy have also been keeping a blog of the travels and have some fantastic bear photos. Take a look at their blog at: http://thehitzels.blogspot.com