Very interesting day today. I had planned to leave Whitehorse and head north to Dawson City, further down the Yukon River, and then to take the “Top of the World Highway” from Dawson City across the border and into Alaska. The Highway is gravel for about 50 miles but runs on top of a ridge line with supposedly great scenery. Well, as I’m loading up the bike in the hotel parking lot, a man and his wife started talking to me and asked where I was going. When I told them, they laughed and said that getting to Dawson City won’t be a problem, but the Highway was washed out (roadway and at least one bridge) last weekend and was going to be closed for months. Since Dawson City is about 275 miles from Whitehorse, that would have been an interesting side trip. So, change of plans, I continued along the Alaska Highway and am in Beaver Creek, about 5 miles from the US-Canada border.
I took in the Yukon Transportation Museum in Whitehorse before I left, and it was pretty cool:
About 30 miles out of Whitehorse the rain stopped and the rest of the day was pretty much perfect. The road started to run into some mountainous country again, and the scenery was once again breath-taking:
Came to Kluane Lake about 20 miles west of Haines Junction, Yukon and I thought the lake was beautiful and the information about the lake was unusual:
(Double Click on the Picture to get a larger view, and then you can zoom in further if you want.)
Here is a view of the lake itself. The water was a bright aqua-marine:
About the last 75 miles before the border, the road conditions really deteriorated with potholes, slides, frost heaves, missing pavement, and generally third-world conditions. I’m assuming that for some reason the further north the Alaska Highway goes the worse the permafrost problems get. It’s also interesting that all along the trip (roughly 1200 miles from Dawson Creek at this point), you can see parts of what must have been the original highway (narrow, winding, gravel-covered or with old blacktop on it) every few miles. The “new” highway is obviously much better, but conditions along the hiway vary from very good to primitive and back again without warning. Had to hold my speed down to about 40 mph and even then, some of the unevenness in the pavement caught me by surprise. Spending the night in a “rustic” motel (actually, not too bad) in Beaver Creek, Yukon (population about 10 people and I suppose a bunch of beavers) and then heading to Fairbanks tomorrow. Miles today: 283. Total: 4,597.
