Alaska Highway in Yukon Territory

We're sitting on a deck overlooking Kluane (pronounced kloo-AH-nee) Lake a few miles south of Destruction Bay, Yukon Territory, having driven the Alaskan Highway from Watson Lake to here in the last two days. Kluane Lake is next to Kluane National Park, surrounded by mountains, and beautiful!! I wish I could upload pictures to show just how beautiful, but I tried posting pictures earlier, and the connection here is just too slow to upload. So I guess I'll probably just have to wait until we're in Fairbanks to get good enough reception to upload pictures. At least I hope we can do it then! We're camped right on the shore of the lake and ate dinner looking out over the lake. After dinner we walked along the stony beach, until Ernie came upon some driftwood and decided to build a fire. He built a roaring fire, so we sat on a log, watching the sun trying to hide behind the mountain, and watching the ripples on the lake. Great way to end the day!!

As we drove down the Alaska Highway yesterday, Ernie looked around and said, "This is exactly what I drove all those miles to see!" Topping a hill, looking out over miles and miles of trees, seeing the highway winding through the trees up ahead, and gazing at the mountains in the distance is an amazing sight! It's not quite as isolated as I expected, with towns often enough to get services occasionally but enough wilderness to feel like we're out with the wild animals (even though we haven't seen any--just several footprints).

We spent last night in Whitehorse, which is the capital of the Yukon and the largest city--two-thirds of the residents of the Yukon live in Whitehorse. But the population of the entire Yukon (which is huge) is less than that of Fishers! We went shopping in Walmart for a few things, and I realized just how spoiled I am, living where I do with the ready availability of everything we want. Most of the shelves were half empty, and they didn't have nearly the variety I'm accustomed to, and I realized how difficult it is to get goods in such remote areas.

It's now 10:45 and still light enough to sit outside and read! Last night when I went to bed at midnight, I looked outside, and it was still about as light as it is at home around 8:30 or 9:00 pm. I woke up during the night, thinking it was probably about 5 or 5:30 am, judging by the amount of light, but when I looked, it was only 3:30 am! Pretty weird! But so far, it hasn't kept me from sleeping well!

Tomorrow we head from Destruction Bay toward Tok, Alaska. If all goes well, we'll be in Alaska by the end of the day tomorrow. However, we've been warned by many people that the drive tomorrow is the roughest of all--the road is apparently extremely terrible, and it's necessary to drive about 20 mph to make it through. Several people have told us it will be OK if we just go very slowly, but to be prepared for a rough ride! Will update when I can again.