The Boardwalk From Yesterday That Was Built By Surrealists.
Here is the picture:
This Morning At The Inn On The Lake
We had a shorter day of driving planned today so we were purposely slow leaving our the place that was like a Bed and Breakfast. After waking up we sat in the common room doing our normal morning things on our laptops, e.g., watching stage 6 of the Criterium du Dauphine. Then our host, Emma, made a breakfast of pancakes with strawberries and bacon and copious amounts of coffee. We chatted with a couple from Alberta who had been checking out the Yukon for a few weeks and were finally on their way home. They told us about the Museum of Beringia near Whitehorse which is dedicated to the period, during the last ice age, when the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska was “open.”
Swan Haven
We sadly left the Inn on the Lake, and turning left on highway 1 to leave Marsh Lake, quickly ran into a line of stopped cars; no one was coming the other way. Traffic was being stopped by a flagger and people would pull up to the flagger, talk to him for a moment, then turn around and drive back into Marsh Lake. When it was our chance to talk to the flagger he informed us that there was an accident up the road and it was likely to be closed for “a few hours.” He also told us about a little park down a nearby road called Swan Haven. We didn’t ask what it was before we set out since we were happy just to have something to do while waiting for the road to open.
In the parkling lot we met a tall, young man with a grizzley black beard who was also stuck on the wrong side of the road closure. He was trying to get from Marsh Lake to Whitehorse to attend his cousin’s graduation from high school. He didn’t have long and left to wait in line some more shortly after we arrived.
In short, there were no swans at Swan Haven. And it was cold–in the mid 40s (Farenheit). There were a couple of ducks a long way off. Or maybe geese. We did see some nice informational posters in the outhouse-style bathroom.
When we drove back out to the road an hour later we waited about 10 minutes and then drove slowly through the single open lane.
The Museum And The Coffee
We visited the Beringia Museum. Here is a list of interesting facts in no particular order:
- There were camels in the Yukon within the past 125,000 years.
- Information about plants in the Yukon area has been discerned by examing seeds found in squirrel nests that were frozen in the permafrost.
- More information about plants can be discovered by looking at pollen in the ice.
- There were giant beaver-like creatures that were, perhaps, 2.5 meters from nose to tail.
- Kluane is pronounced kloo-ah-nee.
In Whitehorse we stopped for coffee, lunch and groceries. The coffee shop was called Midnight Sun Coffee Roaster and was good but not as good as the Bugwood coffee in Smithers. Here is a picture of the coffee shop:
From Whitehorse To Haines Junction To Destruction Bay
Notice that the road from Haines Junction to Destruction Bay parallels the Kluane National Park and Reserve. As we drove northwest the mountain on the left were as spectacular as the screen shot from google maps might suggest. Unfortunately we don’t have the right type of lens to really capture the magnitute of it all and it is still smokey because of the wild fires in the east and the skies were cloudy for much of the day. As soon as we had a view that wasn’t blocked by trees we pulled off to the side of the road and took our daily usie which happened to be photo-bombed by the spectacular mountains.
