The drive on Friday from Dawson Creek to Watson Lake was just gorgeous. That's my favorite part of the whole highway, and our weather was blue, sunny, spectacular. The terrain is so diverse, with each new hillcrest or bend in the road opening up another breathtaking vista. We sighted deer, caribou, Rocky Mountain sheep, and four groups of buffalo along the road. We got just enough cloud mixture toward evening to keep the sun from blinding us and to give us a dramatic sunset. Got into Watson Lake late in the evening and crashed for the night.
Up pretty early this morning, we stopped first in Watson to see the signpost forest - it's made up of tens of thousands of signs that people have put up on the rows of poles provided. I can almost guarantee you that everyone to whom I'm writing this message has got a sign for their hometown there. [Phyllis's photo here was focused on "Green Bay" directly center.] Came nose to nose with a bull moose in the highway, crossed the Yukon River and pushed on to Whitehorse for some lunch and to make a stop at a great knitting shop that Phyllis wanted to visit. [Photo: The significance of the antler-locked moose relative to knitting is unknown but doesn't it look WAY COOL? Here's the background on their grudge match. The shop has since moved from here so I guess we got there just in time, if death-locked knitting moose is your gig.]
Headed out again in the afternoon under still-clear sky, came past Kluane Lake and stopped there at Sheep Mountain to make sure that Phyllis got her sheep sighting - counted about three dozen Dall sheep up there in the sunshine. As we got closer to Tok, the scars of the wildfires became apparent - lots of charred forest there.
So my traveling companion who claimed she wasn't a good long-distance traveler will have to change her tune after these last two days - 615 miles on Fri and 680 miles today, more than I had intended to ask of her, but maximizing our travel time during such great weather was the only sensible thing for us to do. Particularly since that is about to change. The weather as we arrived in Tok tonight was a little slick and snowy. Reports from friends indicate that Anchorage has had snow all day, and Palmer is getting some rain and snow mixed. So it looks like after all these thousands of miles, it's the last day tomorrow that has the potential to be the bad driving day for us as we come through a series of mountain passes. We'll just sleep in a bit in the morning so we have plenty of daylight when we start, then go carefully and take our time. Haven't come all this way to screw up now.
In the meanwhile, we have a clean, comfortable room at one of the few motels that hasn't closed for the season, and we're near to the famous Fast Eddy's restaurant where we had a great, late dinner tonight. I thought the fire season was about over but we had a posse of firefighters in the restaurant tonight - and gosh, we just hated that. We might have to linger over breakfast there tomorrow.
Peg and Phyllis
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Phyllis remembers:
What an unbelievable, beautiful, memorable day. It was one of those days you dream about. The scenery is so stunning I can no longer just sit and knit. The wildlife is plentiful, although I kept whining for sheep (what else would you expect from a knitter?). Peg finally pulled over, while I plaintively repeated "sheeeeepies....", to a good sheep sighting spot. We couldn't have had better weather, either.
The knitting shop in Whitehorse was the one stop I really wanted to make, and Peg made it happen. I had been through their website so much that I knew exactly what I wanted, a mitten kit of black and red qiviuq yarn (from musk ox - 8 times as warm as wool and far more difficult to collect) with a musk ox design. I didn't make them last year but will this fall.
I still have not driven more than 6 hours total on this whole trip.
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