Kinaskan Park BC to Whitehorse YK, 2 days

 

Lots of pictures on these 2 days, even without Cathie's phone. She still took a lot of them with mine though, some of which you'll see here.

We felt kind of lazy this morning, not leaving our beautiful site until about 6:30 PDT. It was quite light when I got up at 5 though, and at least 3 RV's had left ahead of us, some by quite a bit. So we were laggards. Another beautiful morning for a drive:

Nice spot for a lone boondocker to spend the night

A different sort of bridge, common up here

Another very full river; metal grating on bridge roadway

Every waterway is running high

Some of the pavement along here is looking tired and feeling bumpy

Then the mountain views start up again, and we are revived:

We played tag with this fellow traveler for an hour or so this morning

We think the large brown areas on the mountain slope are likely from insect damage

Some nice little Arctic Lupins coming up

Nice breakfast spot, with views and Lupins out the door

Later we had a good stop at the Watson Lake Tourist Center. While I posted a blog, Cathie found free lunch for us at a BBQ put on by the Public Service Association (?). Of course her phone wasn't working, so no pictures of burgers, dogs and salads. 

This river was running very high, and we could see flood preparations underway further downstream:

We think this was the Teslin River running high

Some future flood prep downstream

New bridge will be higher and stronger than the old one

Coming into Teslin, the river is washing the bottom of this major bridge

Sandbags in Teslin

It's hard to see in the picture above, but those white bags on the left are sandbags, each about the size of a wrapped round hay bale. The river is lapping higher and higher in the middle of the picture. The moose is supposed to protect the sandbags I think. :))

Some more nice views. See the Happy Face?:

Construction season is getting underway:

Some delays

Lots of dust when traffic is moving, especially from the dump trucks

High-flowing river almost out to the roadway

Why not spray some of that water here? Good question

Good views and better roads ahead though

We got to a forgettable Yukon Govt campground by about 6, later than usual due to the construction delays. It was a pretty good night though, the burbling stream nearby masked most overnight noises.

Thursday's route:

Friday we were left with only a short run in to Whitehorse. We had made a reservation for the weekend at Hi Country park, just outside Whitehorse. We expected to be spending some time in town on Cath's cell phone issues, and getting info at the Tourist Center.

The bad news is that Cathie's phone is kaput for now, we think due to a bad battery. We did manage to find a new Samsung A52 that will do just fine though. Not the latest model, but just one back for Samsung in the A5 line. Price was competitive with Amazon, and there's no such thing as 1-day Prime delivery to Whitehorse! 

Expanded highway approaching Whitehorse

We lucked into another free lunch today

BBQ'd sausages were popular. They even had vegetarian versions (not for us though)

On the way in to town we saw a sign announcing that the Robert Service Parkway was now open. This is the main road into downtown, so we wondered what was going on. We did see some recent activity on the way in:

They told us at the Tourist Center that the road had just been reopened the previous day, after almost 7 weeks of cleanup work. Apparently all the water caused the clay hillside to just melt down and over the road and on into the nearby Yukon River.

CBC story link HERE.

Coming back out of town along the slideway

What looks like an island in the middle of the picture was part of the debris

I guess it is an island now, a brand new one.

This is what our site looked like tonight, at about 10:45 MST.

Side note, apparently the Yukon uses Mountain Standard Time (MST), which works out to be the same as PDT.

Friday's short route: