Whitehorse to Watson Lake

And now we took a very decidedly southern direction from the Dempster Highway onto the "Klondike Highway"—Yukon Hwy 2.   Our first destination was the city of Whitehorse, and then southeast to Watson Lake.   There we turned south, and headed to the province of British Columbia, saying farewell to Yukon.

We followed the historic Yukon River all the way from Dawson City to Whitehorse and recognized names and places we’d learned about previously as we went along.   A spot we enjoyed seeing was the Five Finger Rapids, which we'd learned presented an especially challenging passage for the sternwheelers to negotiate through!   We also felt we were chasing summer, or at least autumn, as we went along from north to south.   On the Dempster Highway, in the northernmost part of our journey, we saw trees that were already past peak leaf color.   South of Dawson City we hit the peak of leaf color, and then in Whitehorse we found the leaf color a few days prior to peak.   We also noted the trees getting bigger and bigger, the permafrost giving way to deeper, if not richer, soils!   Very fun to see the change of seasons and geology. 

The historic Yukon River was our travel companion for kilometers and kilometers

Many beautiful bridge span the river

The historic Five Finger Rapids of the Yukon River

A major challenge to riverboat captains to negotiate

Sternwheeler going through the Five Finger Rapids ca 1900

Beautiful mountains near Whitehorse, Yukon

We stayed in Whitehorse, Yukon, for a few days to do some preventive maintenance on our truck, re-provision for the journey ahead, visit that microbrew, a bakery, and a farmer’s market; and check out a few museums.   Whitehorse is the largest city we’d seen in months, with a population of 26,500, which is over two thirds the total population of the province.  It got its name from the huge rapids in the river here, mistaken for a galloping herd of white horses by early miners gazing at them from a distance.  It has been the capitol of Yukon Territories since 1953—transferred here from Dawson City at that time.    It seemed to us that Whitehorse gracefully acknowledges its historic past but is the cosmopolitan hot-spot of the Yukon of today.  

Lily under a rainbow following shower on our arrival to Whitehorse.  An omen??

No caption needed...

Historic part of of very modern town

Whitehorse was once the largest metropolitan area in Canada.   Since the early days it has been a real transportation hub, connected to Skagway, Alaska by railway during the gold rush, to Dawson City by sternwheelers on the Yukon River, and then in 1942, to the rest of Canada and the U.S. via the Al-Can Highway.  In fact, Whitehorse served as the headquarters for construction of the western half of the Al-Can, which brought thousands of American military and civilian workers here.   Many of them never left this beautiful area.   We really enjoyed learning about all of this and more at the Yukon Transportation Museum.

Wonderful museum with exhibits on every form of transportation known in Yukon history,
including backpacking, dog-sledding, sleigh-riding, caterpillar tractor trails,
riverboats, trains, and bush planes

Out front of this museum is the world's largest weather vane!   It is a decommissioned DC-3 which was
mounted on pedestal back in 2009 and now forever points into the oncoming wind.   What a hoot
it was to have this HUGE thing rotate above our heads with changes in the wind!

The other museum we visited here was called Beringia, and it was all about a subcontinent by that name that existed here long ago.  I’d always heard this called the “land bridge” that connected Siberia and Alaska during the last ice age, and over which early humans walked eastward from Asia to inhabit North America.   It was so much more than that , however, and the demonstrations and exhibits in this museum were absolutely fascinating!  

So what's wrong with this picture...?  
I know, you are wondering if bananas really grow in Canada!

Beringia Museum--absolutely fantastic!

We learned that Beringia formed 10,000 to 2.6 million years ago because so much water was locked up in the huge glaciers that covered most of North America that sea levels dropped about 450 feet.   That allowed a landmass stretching from eastern Siberia through Alaska to Yukon to form.   Beringia was never glaciated and the environment was a very cold, dry grassland.   On it evolved cold-tolerant, grass-eating...and predators.  Wooly mammoths, steppe bison, saiga antelopes, camels, scimitar cats, American lions, small horses, giant short-faced bears, and carnivorous beavers as large as black bears all lived in Beringia.   Their skeletal remains, and in some cases, mummies of their entire bodies, are uncovered not only by paleontologists, but by gold miners blasting away at the ancient creek beds with high pressure water hoses—remember all that wooly mammoth tusk for sale back in Dawson City??!   

Subcontinent of Beringia shown in green was a huge land mass which formed
between Asia and North America during the last ice age

Wooly mammoth (on left)

The top carnivore of Beringia was a saber toothed lion every bit as large and
fierce as the lions of Africa today. 

Bernie in silhouette with skeletal remains of Beringian giant short-faced bear.

Reproduced skeleton of steppe bison from Beringia.  A mummified steppe bison such as this,
nicknamed "Blue Babe", is on display at the Museum of the North
in Fairbanks, Alaska (see blog post)

Actual skulls of modern beaver and the giant beaver of Beringia shows incredible
size difference

Gold miners using high pressure water to tear through permafrost into ancient creek beds frequently
find skeletons of animals from Beringia.  They have also found entire mummified
Beringian horses, steppe bison, and a baby wooly mammoth.   

Most of these animals did not survive to present times, disappearing as the earth warmed up.   The Saiga antelope still live in the Himalayas, however, where their big bulbous noses continue to warm cold air before they breathe it.   Camels migrated to Asia from Beringia, and it is interesting to contemplate how human history in the Middle East was affected by these animals 10,000 years after Beringia was no more.  

Saiga antelope, female and male

And there are the Beringian species that survive to live in the north country today—arctic ground squirrels, caribou, Dall sheep, musk oxen, grizzly bears and ravens!!   These are all animals we’ve been seeing a lot of these last few months, whose origins we never contemplated or appreciated as much as we do now!  

Dall sheep originated in Beringia

People also lived in Beringia near the great ice sheets.  They were resourceful hunters and gatherers who travelled the land to hunt large mammals and collect edible plants.  Archeologists have found their tools and campsites along the Dempster Highway corridor dating to the end of the ice age, 10,000+ years ago.    They lacked a written language but kept their history alive through storytelling passed down through the generations.  The museum had recordings of first nations elders telling legends taught them by their great-great grandparents which echo a distant time of large and fierce animals, floods, and other events likely related to their actual lives in Beringia.   Fascinating stuff!   Bernie, former beaver-trapper, was especially unnerved by a legend about giant beavers that attacked and ate people!

Hunter-gatherer people of Beringia

Their survival depended, they said, on warm clothing, social connections,
 and knowledge of the land

The history of humans in Beringia is suggested by legends of
the first nations people of today

Recordings of interviews with first nations' elders have resulted in a
fascinating and priceless museum collection

We had hands-on instruction in use an atlatl, a spear-throwing device
used by ancient peoples to bring down large game

Source of Bernie's recent nightmares....

I was moved as I came to understand these ancient people of Beringia are the ancestors of all the native tribes we encountered during our journey this summer, including those of the Whitehorse area.    I have tried to describe in this travel blog the beauty and complexity of their cultures.  I have also written much about gold and other history of this region since European contact, and much of that has been, let’s face it, ugly….   Exhibits in the Beringia museum and the Kwanlin Dun Cultural Center in Whitehorse reminded us to look at all this from the perspective of TIME.   Native people have lived here for over 10,000 years.   Their first contact with Russians (see Sitka blog post) was in the 1700s, only 300 years ago, and the gold rush started just 150 years ago—a time period which, in the big picture, is barely the blink of an eye!!   They speak of having survived the eons by successfully adapting to all manner of change in their long, long history, and that this is just another challenge that they will endure and get beyond with dignity and pride.   It occurs to me the human race as a whole is facing a really BIG challenge at present—global climate change.  How will we adapt and change?   What will the museums of the future have to say about it?

Speaking of native tribes, as we drove east from Whitehorse on the Al-Can (Yukon Hwy 1) toward Watson Lake, we were surprised to encounter totem poles and clan houses again, obviously inspired by coastal cultures!   We wondered how this could be, so far from the Pacific coast!   We learned these were inland Tlingit tribes, and they used the area’s extensive river systems (and their feet!) to maintain cultural ties with the coast.   It was great to see their beautiful work and we realized how much we’d missed it during our months in the interior!!

Lily gets reacquainted with coastal native culture 

Dugout (cedar) canoes used by Tlingit tribes

Tlingit clan house

Another sort of "cultural artifact" we encountered was the "Sign Post Forest" of Watson Lake, Yukon.  Now this is a tale!   It was started in 1942, by one of those guys I mentioned who came here from the U.S. to work on construction of the Al-Can Hwy.    It was common practice for the Army Corp of Engineers to put up a directional post at their camps giving mileage to surrounding communities and various parts of the world.  Well, one Private Carl Lindley, from Company D of the 341st division, while repairing a directional post, decided to add to it his home town sign of Danville, Illinois.  Known here as "the homesick, lonesome soldier”, he couldn’t have known at the time the tradition he started!   Gradually, and then not-so-gradually, more and more and more signs were added by people passing through this area to where now they number—get this—80,000, and the place has been designated a National Historic Site by the Canadian government!   Fun, eh?

Sign Post Forest in Watson Lake, Yukon Territories

Little did he know back then....

...what this would become!

A signpost from someone close to home!!!

Oh, how we love Canada, and we have such good memories of our time in the Yukon Territories!  Watson Lake sits on the border with British Columbia, and that is where we were headed next on our journey towards home.   We are glad to still have one more province to travel through before we have to leave this country of extremely friendly, polite and kind people.

Peggy wrapped in beloved maple leaf flag of Canada