Alaska Trip 2011: May 21-22 - How Will We Know if the World Ends?

This is page 10 of our Alaska 2011 trip journal. Click here for the first page. If you want to bookmark this journal, http://jeanne-travels.blogspot.com always links to the newest page.

Today we ventured back into the Yukon Territory wilderness. So if the world ended today as predicted, how would we know? No cell serice, no internet, no radio... Maybe the whole thing will pass us by if they don't know we are here? Our next major destination is Whitehorse, the Yukon capital. Looks like it will take us two days to get there.

Watson Lake to Teslin

There was an old log cabin along the road at this pullout. No indication around as to what it was for or how long it had been there.

From the same pullout, here is a view of the road ahead. This is near the Swift River.

Seems like we have always been able to find a nice, scenic spot to stop for lunch. Maybe it's because there just aren't that many ugly places. A couple of these are windshield shots, from before we pulled over for lunch.

Here is a view looking down into the valley from our pullout. This marshy area looked like it would be a good place to spot moose, but we still didn't see any.

Several places along the road here, there are rocky embankments like the one in these pictures. People have taken the larger rocks and spelled out messages or names. It's hard to see in these pictures without looking at the larger view, but it was plain as day when I took the pictures.

Rancheria Falls

This area had a nice nature trail to the falls. Ok, I admit I did not walk all the way to the falls, but I did get some nice pictures of the boreal forest along the trail. A boreal forest is the northern forest south of the arctic tree line. The trees are mostly pine and spruce, with aspens in some areas. The ground is frequently covered with moss, rather than other ground cover.

Gnarly old tree trunk!

I could be wrong, but I think this is moose scat. I put my foot in the picture (but hopefully not the scat!) to show the relative size - it's much larger than deer scat. But I'm not a wildlife expert, so please feel free to set me straight if I am wrong.

This is as close as we have come to seeing the elusive moose (elusive to us anyway) but we are hot on the trail.

Still No Moose

Another beautiful overlook, with lake and marsh below, but still no moose. There were actually two lakes you could see from this overlook. One of them was frozen, the other was not.

Still no Cell Service

We arrived in Teslin YT, where once again the phone showed service, but still calls would not go through. Maybe the world really did end, and we just don't know about it yet? (Just joking of course.)

We had a beaautiful view of the lake, and might have rested a day or two here if we had cell service and good internet. But we have been several days where no one could reach us if they needed to. We did manage to get a connection by going up to the restaurant, but that was about it. I'm still way behind on the journal, but I am NOT going to upload pictures at Canadian rates ($2 per megabyte).

Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining - just telling the story of our trip. We fully expected to go through areas where there would be no service, but this one caught us off guard. Nothing in our research indicated we would be quite so long without service. What made it frustrating was that there were a couple phone calls we needed to make. I really did expect to make connection in the towns along the way. Live and learn.

May 22, Looks Like the World Did Not End After All

Or if it did, we missed it.

Teslin advertises itself as the Gateway to the Southern Lakes. I guess all things are relative. It's hard to get your mind around something north of the 60th parallel being referred to as "southern" but it is, after all, southern Yukon. There are a number of lakes around here, and it appears water-related recreation abounds in the summer.

Gloomy, Rainy Day

Considering we have been on the road for three weeks, and it is spring, we really haven't had an extraordinary amount of rain, and most of it has been light. So I can't complain when we have a rainy day here and there. It is to be expected. These windshield shots show rain spots and occasional wiper blades. It's all part of the story.

It's just as well it was rainy today - It seems this stretch of road does not have very many pullouts. We did find one in time for lunch, and the rain had slowed down a bit, so we got some pictures without the wipers in the way. Clouds are still obscuring the mountains though.

Marsh Lake

Just in case you were missing those rainy windshield shots, here are a couple more. This is one of the southern lakes, Marsh Lake. It was just thawing, so it was part water, and part broken ice. The ice seemed to have an aqua or green color to it, and I was wondering if it was an illusion due to the ice. These pictures did not pick up the color very well. Too gray out, I guess.

Back to Civilization

We arrived in Whitehorse on Sunday afternoon, and were relieved to find that we finally had cell service. We will stay here two or three days, depending on what there is to see and so. So far, we have traveled 3500 miles, not counting separate sightseeing trips in the trailblazer.

---