Rocky Mountain High

This evening finds me in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. It was a long day of driving. A long, but spectacular day. I’ll end up letting the pictures do a lot of the talking.

Joe and I had decided that we were going to take a three-hour detour (sounds a lot like a “three-hour tour”…) and go up a highway called the Liard Highway to the border with the Northwest Territories. Sure, it was completely out of the way and involved driving an hour and a half out of Fort Nelson and then an hour and a half back again, but I think it was worth it. Joe did all of the driving on this little trip down a winding but paved roué with very little traffic and no buildings all he way up to the Northwest Territories border. As we drove down, it began raining, but by the time we approached the border, that rain had turned into snow. Quite the thrill…driving through snow in late May. We made it to the Northwest Territories border and drove just across it, took some pictures, then drove all the way back to Fort Nelson. It wasn’t very spectacular (though we did see a buffalo and some black bears on the drive), but it is nice to be able to say I’ve been to the Northwest Territories.

This detour meant that we didn’t really get going until ten in the morning (Pacific time). The sun had been up since 4 in the morning so we were well into the day when we got going. Within an hour out of Fort Nelson, the road turned west and began heading towards the mountains we had seen yesterday. Spectacular…just spectacular. I now know why people have raved about the Alaska Highway with all of its scenic glory. Going northbound, it started out with a lot of steep climbing and winding around mountains. After that, we passed between two different mountain ranges following a river valley. The highway then went on by leapfrogging through gaps in the ranges from river valley to river valley. In this way, there are relatively few steep climbs or hairpin curves; the highway is very well designed. But never do you leave the scenic mountains and seemingly endless forests.

After about three hours going through those mountains, the road wound back out into the foothills to the town of Watson Lake where we gassed up. The lady at the counter when I paid for gas maintained that she could tell I wasn’t from around the area because of my accent. She then said that she thought it was one of the most pleasant sounding accents she had heard. I found that to be somewhat flattering. After leaving Watson Lake, the road re-entered the mountains, following a variety of river valleys and passing by numerous individual mountain ranges. We crossed the continental divide and entered the Yukon Territory (for the final time—the road actually crosses the British Columbia/Yukon Territory border seven times in its winding journey) by early evening and followed a series of lakes and mountain ranges into the city of Whitehorse. Whitehorse itself is an eccentric town—busy, populated, but still looking very touristy. Still, I rather like it.

It’s now almost ten a night here, but the sun is still up. I think we still have an hour or so of daylight left. If this post seems short or lacking in details, I’m just going to let the pictures do the talking. It’s really a sensory overload—Joe’s camera had 537 new pictures on it just from today. With the time we were driving, this works out to about one picture every two minutes. Imagine nine straight hours of non-stop scenic vistas of mountains and rushing rivers and forests…sensory overload. It all kind of blends together after a while. But it was an exciting sort of day. I’m glad to be going to sleep tonight. Tomorrow we will cross into Alaska and end the day in Anchorage!