Watson Lake YT to Whitehorse YT
Today we drove from Watson Lake to Whitehorse (Both in Yukon Territory). The drive was nice, but we did not see a single sign of wildlife, as opposed to yesterday where surprises were around every corner. Actually, except for a few black birds all we saw was a dead porcupine in the middle of the road.
Watson Lake’s claim to fame is the Sign Post Forest. During the building of the Alaska Highway, a U.S. solder was homesick for his home town, so he posted a sign for Danville, Illinois on a tree near town. Other solders did the same, and the result was the beginning of the Sign Post Forest. In the late 40’s when the road opened to the public, travelers started posting signs from their home towns and the tradition continues to this day. Today the sign post forest hosts 78,336 signs from travelers all around the world. Many of the signs are really clever and sure tell a story.
Entrance to the sign post forest
The sign that started it all is now in the visitors center
Row after row of traveler’s signs
Not to be left out, we also continued the tradition by posting our sign which depicts Chandler, and the towns in Montana and Kansas where we are from (sure helps you have have an artist in the family!).
While walking around the forest we came across a sign that someone had posted from Great Bend, KS. Not exactly my home town but its close (only about 19 miles away)
Tonight we are at the Hi Country RV Park in Whitehorse. We had planned to stay two nights here but the park is kind of crowded and “tight”, so we will will be moving on down the road tomorrow. At a rest stop, we talked to a couple from Kodiak, AK who said that between here and the border we have about 180 miles of gravel road where they are repairing the road due to frost heaves. It should be interesting… This couple was on their 17th trip over the Alaska Highway!
Todays Stats (Day 12):
| Miles driven: | 271 miles |
| Hours on road: | 5 hours, 45 minutes |
| Gas prices: | none |
Route (Day 12):
No comments:
Post a Comment