Bear spotting, west of Whitehorse, Yukon.
We didn’t hold our breath during the 10-minute drive back to town but we might have if it were possible.
We had first learned of the outage the day before, trying to buy groceries in the town of Dease Lake. “No credit cards,” the cashier told us. “The internet is out. Cash only.” I handed over a couple of the plastic notes with Her Majesty’s portrait on them, which Canadians regard as money, and thought nothing more of it until we stopped further up the road at the Jade City store, which sells, as you might guess, jade figurines and trinkets. There the owner told us that the internet and phone was out in the entire province. “You’ll need to pay cash for everything including fuel until it is restored. Banks and ATMs are closed as well.”
I checked my wallet. I had about $80 of Canadian currency. It was about enough to fill the tank once but then we’d have no cash for anything else, and we needed food again, and some campgrounds only took cash. We camped that night at the mosquito infested provincial park at Lake Watson, Yukon. It cost another $20 of our precious cash and we now each had more bites than dollars. The thought of having to spend one more night with those mosquitos terrified us. We no longer had enough cash to fill the tank and Whitehorse was about 200 km away.
Thankfully, as well drove back to the Watson Lake visitor’s center that morning, four bars of cell coverage lit up on the Sienna’s Apple CarPlay screen. We had cell service! The line had been repaired. We pulled into the first gas station we saw (the only one in town). Pay at the pump wasn’t working but the attendant scribbled the amount fuel he pumped into the tank on a scrap of paper and I was able to pay with a credit card inside the store. We were back in business!
That morning we pulled over to watch a black bear with her two cubs grazing on the grass at the side of the highway. The mosquitos were forgotten.
Stopping to gawk at the scenery on the road to Haines
Several hundred kilometers west of Whitehorse on the Alaska-Canada Highway (known as the Alcan) there is a turnoff at a town barely more than an intersection called Haines Junction. Hang a left here and you’ll travel down a peninsula traversing some of the most gorgeous scenery the North American continent has to offer. The elevation of the road soars to over 3,000 meters (10,000 ft) before gliding down again to sea level all over a distance of just over 100 kilometers. Mountains whose summits are cloaked in ice, snow, and clouds are surrounded by meadows of hardy grasses and wildflowers in yellow, purple, and red.
Sixty kilometers before the end of this road we came upon a lonely kiosk occupied by a beefy young gentleman in full hipster beard. I handed him our documents, exchanged some pleasantries (he had no questions about alcohol or cannabis) and 30 seconds later, we were back in the US of A. We were that much closer to our destination for the day, the town of Haines, and our designation for this trip, the State of Alaska. It was the 49th to join these United States and the 48th I can now check off my “have visited” list.
Haines, which calls itself the ‘Adventure Capital of Alaska,’ is perched on the Chillkoot Inlet, a water way that leads to Juneau, the real capital of the state about 5 hours away by ferry, and to the Pacific Ocean. We are staying at a small oceanside campground, which has room for around 40 RVs and a patch of grass that fits about 8 tents. We are using our tent because the tent area is more pleasant and it is cheaper than getting an RV site with power, water and sewer, that we don’t need. We look out across the inlet to the still-snowy mountains beyond.
Classic Saturday Lunch (tuna, salad, & chips) — in Haines, Alaska
The inlet itself offers views of cruise ships and ferries going by and of aquatic wildlife. This morning while drinking our coffee, Barb spotted a Bald Eagle just hanging out at the dock. There was also a ravenous raven who tried to grab some of our oatmeal from the picnic table while we were distracted by the eagle.
You can’t access Haines by road from the rest of Alaska or from anywhere in the US. You can only get there by sea or driving through Canada. It is a small town, just 1,900 permanent residents but there is a surprising amount to see and do here. The town boasts three grocery stores, a book store, an outdoors shop (mostly for anglers and hunters but some backpacking gear as well) and lots of gift shops.
On our first day here, we did a self-guiding walking tour of town taking in the American Bald Eagle Foundation and Natural History Museum, the first Protestant bell ever rung in Alaska (according to the plaque), and a farmer’s market that was light on vegetables and heavy on cookies, cake, and honey. A young lady was making pour-over coffee by the cup for $3 a pop. She was doing a brisk business. I briefly considered grabbing a table and undercutting her at $2.50.
We enjoyed a rare ‘meal out’ at the Fireweed Restaurant feasting on hummus (what else?) Greek salad and pizza. The pita bread appeared to be made fresh in house. The hummus was green and so thick it was served like a scoop of ice cream but like everything else we had, it was fresh and tasty if somewhat inauthentic.
In the next few days we will do a rafting trip to try and see more eagles and take the ‘fast’ ferry to Skagway, Alaska where will check out the ‘big city’ and ride a narrow-gauge choo choo to Whitehorse and back again.
On Friday, we’ve booked a ferry to Juneau and will spend some time there and in Sitka, which was the capital of Russian Alaska before the sale of the territory to the US in 1867. Sitka is also the capital of Jewish Alaska in Michael Chabon’s novel of speculative fiction, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (one of my all-time favorite novels).
The ferry to Juneau doesn’t arrive until 9 pm but that still gives us more than an hour to get settled before candle lighting time! Though the sun officially sets at around 10:15 pm, it never really gets dark and the sun appears above the horizon again at 4 am. We go to sleep and awaken in broad daylight. Dusk and dawn exist in theory but I have yet to see them.
The weather in southeast Alaska has been thus far, cool and breezy with light patches of rain but today while we were hiking the rain turned heavy and we were soaked to the skin. At times like this a campground with hot showers and a laundry room is a luxury for which to be grateful. The horrific mosquitos of the Yukon have been, so far, nowhere to be seen. It’s been restful to have had a few days with no driving and as we will be leaving the van here when we go to Juneau and Sitka, we will enjoy a nice respite from the long days behind the wheel it took to get us here.
Once we return from Juneau sometime next week, we will return to the road. To visit the interior of Alaska, we will need to drive back into Canada and continue on the Alcan for another two days to reenter the state near Tok before continuing on to Anchorage as we continue our exploration of the land of the midnight sun.