30 km southeast of Beaver Creek, Yukon Territory – Thursday, July 21, 2011
We woke up to these beautiful surroundings.
Started off the day with a hike along the Spruce Beetle Trail. This little beetle, about the size of a grain of rice, is responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of spruce trees throughout Canada. They burrow into the bark and lay their eggs and when the larvae hatch they eat they way horizontally around the tree and slowly starve it. The Canadians view this as a natural process which in the long run helps strengthen the forest by getting rid of the weak trees. Along the trail we were treated with these sights.
Our next stop was an overlook of Kluane Lake. It’s calm to fame is that 300-400 years ago, a glacier was responsible for permanently reversing the flow of the lake drainage. It used to drain into the Pacific Ocean. It now drains into the Artic Ocean.
Frank wanted to go see Silver City, a ghost town, so we unhooked the Element and took off down a dirt road. This was once a thriving mining community but was abandoned in 1924.
Hoping to see some Dahl Sheep, we stopped at the Kluane National Park and Reserve. We asked the park ranger about a hike and she said everybody was up Sheep Creek, then realizing what she had said, added “without a paddle”. We all had a good chuckle about that one. No sheep to be found.
We wanted to see where the official ceremony commemorating the opening of the Alaska Canada Highway took place. It’s called Soldiers Summit and it is high above Kluane Lake. Frank’s walking the original road and you can see the current road down by the lake.
EJ wanted to stop at Burwash Landing to see the Kluane Museum of Natural History. It was filled with beautiful wildlife exhibits that will help us identify animals in the future. It also had several displays about the Tutchone people.
We keep seeing bicyclists along the way. Are they traveling the whole length of the Alcan Highway?
Well, the stories we heard about the condition of the road were all true. Slow going all the way. After Burwash Landing the road really started to deteriorate. There was one point where we had to follow a pilot truck across about 2 miles of gravel. The only purpose that we could tell was to hold down our speed. Well. that wasn’t going to be a problem because Frank didn’t want to go as fast as the pilot truck was going. The road just turned nasty and the dust was so bad you couldn’t see out of the backup camera. We are finally experiencing the frost heaves we have heard so much about. The result is that the road drops about one to three feet resulting in a real interesting roller coaster ride. Some of these are marked by signs or red flags. Some you get to find all by yourself. You see lots of skid marks on the road where folks slam on their brakes trying to slow before the dip. Frank said his eyeballs hurt from staring so hard at the road trying to see the frost heaves coming. It was a long afternoon.
We ended up at another turnout about 30 km from Beaver Creek at 8:30PM. This is our reward for what we endured today. You don’t see many sunsets like this, especially at 10:30 at night!
See how close we are to Alaska?
| BG Miles Today | 151 | BG Total Miles | 5333 |
| Eat Out total $ | 415.73 | BG Total Fuel $ | 2984.93 |
| Entertainment total $ | 141.52 | Total Camping $ | 563.88 |
| E Miles Today | 6.2 | E Total Miles | 1604.5 |
| E Total Fuel $ | 341.04 | Day # of Trip | 51 |
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