Day 27 – Wednesday, August 19th
Dick woke up early and got ready and started driving while Patti was still sleeping. That is an advantage to our arrangement in the minivan. Dick disturbed Patti’s sleep with an exclamation, “Bear!” There on the road about two hundred yards ahead of the now stopped car was a black bear. It was ambling along the right side of the road when it suddenly stopped and turned around and looked at us. He seemed unsure what to do since we were not moving. He walked across the road, stopping a couple of times to examine us again. Then up the slope, stopping every few steps to look at us. With one final look, he disappeared over the top of the hill. We were able to get a couple good pictures of it before it was gone. With this bear, it meant that we had seen both Grizzly Bears and a Black Bear along the road during our trip. Just a little further down the road we stopped to buy ice and get Patti her morning coffee. We got just 20 miles down the road and stopped for ice and coffee, and she got up.
We drove all morning in the continued sense of wilderness. No traffic, no crossroads, no houses, just an occasional campground, RV park or village. This is really an isolated area. The road mostly followed the mighty Yukon River. We often thought about all of the gold rush stampeders heading through this area over a hundred years ago. How isolated and wild it must have seemed to them.
We planned to arrive in Whitehorse Yukon early enough to see some sights that we missed the first time through. We are now going back to connect up with the Alaska Highway for a relatively short time.
We went to two lovely museums in Whitehorse. The first was the Transportation Museum, which has the full-sized DC3 plane as a weathervane in the front of it. This museum did a nice job of representing both the construction of the Alaska Highway, as well as the transportation history of the gold rush. 
We saw info about people climbing over the Chilroot Pass where each was required to carry a year's worth of provisions, about 2000 pounds, in order to be allowed into Canada. Once over the pass, while waiting for the Spring thaw, these Stampeders set about building their own boats. They eventually went down the Yukon River to Dawson City, about 700 miles on water. All of this happened in 1898-1900. We learned more about the building of the railroad across from Skagway, which made it possible for later gold rushers to get through without having to carry that ton of provisions on their backs up and over a mountain pass. 
There was also a great exhibit about the steamboats, some of which went all the way on the Yukon River to the Bering Sea, 1200 miles away. Having just driven from Dawson City and seen the Riverboats earlier in Fairbanks, we had a sense of tying this all together. We learned that in 1898 it could take several months to get to Dawson City from Skagway, but know you can drive it in one long day.
We saw a video about life on the river one hundred years ago. One part talked about what a big event it was at the beginning of the river season. once the ice had left the river and boats could travel again. People so looked forward to the first riverboat to arrive from downstream, carrying mail and goods. The river was a dangerous place for these steamboats. Even experienced pilots sometimes crashed at rapids or narrow places. The less experienced pilots left piles of lumber that had been fine boats.
Then we went to the Beringia Museum. Beringia is the name for the subcontinent that ranged from Siberia to the Yukon that was never glaciated. This was maybe 30-40,000 years ago. Because so much of the world’s water was tied up in glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere, the sea level dropped by several hundred feet exposing the continental shelf between North America and Asia. We were fascinated to find out why this area, so far north, had not been glaciated while areas to the east and much further south were covered with glaciers up to a mile thick. The answer was the high mountains to the south that wrung out most of the moisture, leaving little to form snow. This is still true today, causing much of this northern area to have cold desert conditions.
Scientists assume that people followed the animals across that grassy savannah. Some of the most interesting fossil and bone remains that have been found in the Yukon and Alaska include giant 400-pound beavers, woolly mammoths, giant sloths, short nosed bears, and giant lions. One of the really fascinating things studied through this center is the local Indian legends about giant creatures and monsters. Archeologists have been able to follow some of those legends to find bone remains of wooly mammoths and other creatures. There are also legends about how the large monster sized animals were made smaller like the ones we have today. Very cool as a storyteller. Patti was awestruck at the idea of stories being passed along from 30,000 years ago or more. This museum did a fine job of integrating science and story, working closely with the First Nations peoples.
At about 4:00, we drove around downtown exploring a bit, and then, we were ready to stop! It was great to find a nice downtown hotel and take the evening off with resting, reading, and cooking a meal in the microwave. Even nonstop drivers and cultural explorers need an evening off. Patti had a brief conversation with a wildlife photographer talking about some of adventures shooting photos in the wilderness.
Dick woke up early and got ready and started driving while Patti was still sleeping. That is an advantage to our arrangement in the minivan. Dick disturbed Patti’s sleep with an exclamation, “Bear!” There on the road about two hundred yards ahead of the now stopped car was a black bear. It was ambling along the right side of the road when it suddenly stopped and turned around and looked at us. He seemed unsure what to do since we were not moving. He walked across the road, stopping a couple of times to examine us again. Then up the slope, stopping every few steps to look at us. With one final look, he disappeared over the top of the hill. We were able to get a couple good pictures of it before it was gone. With this bear, it meant that we had seen both Grizzly Bears and a Black Bear along the road during our trip. Just a little further down the road we stopped to buy ice and get Patti her morning coffee. We got just 20 miles down the road and stopped for ice and coffee, and she got up.We drove all morning in the continued sense of wilderness. No traffic, no crossroads, no houses, just an occasional campground, RV park or village. This is really an isolated area. The road mostly followed the mighty Yukon River. We often thought about all of the gold rush stampeders heading through this area over a hundred years ago. How isolated and wild it must have seemed to them.
We planned to arrive in Whitehorse Yukon early enough to see some sights that we missed the first time through. We are now going back to connect up with the Alaska Highway for a relatively short time.
We went to two lovely museums in Whitehorse. The first was the Transportation Museum, which has the full-sized DC3 plane as a weathervane in the front of it. This museum did a nice job of representing both the construction of the Alaska Highway, as well as the transportation history of the gold rush. 
We saw info about people climbing over the Chilroot Pass where each was required to carry a year's worth of provisions, about 2000 pounds, in order to be allowed into Canada. Once over the pass, while waiting for the Spring thaw, these Stampeders set about building their own boats. They eventually went down the Yukon River to Dawson City, about 700 miles on water. All of this happened in 1898-1900. We learned more about the building of the railroad across from Skagway, which made it possible for later gold rushers to get through without having to carry that ton of provisions on their backs up and over a mountain pass. 
There was also a great exhibit about the steamboats, some of which went all the way on the Yukon River to the Bering Sea, 1200 miles away. Having just driven from Dawson City and seen the Riverboats earlier in Fairbanks, we had a sense of tying this all together. We learned that in 1898 it could take several months to get to Dawson City from Skagway, but know you can drive it in one long day.We saw a video about life on the river one hundred years ago. One part talked about what a big event it was at the beginning of the river season. once the ice had left the river and boats could travel again. People so looked forward to the first riverboat to arrive from downstream, carrying mail and goods. The river was a dangerous place for these steamboats. Even experienced pilots sometimes crashed at rapids or narrow places. The less experienced pilots left piles of lumber that had been fine boats.
Then we went to the Beringia Museum. Beringia is the name for the subcontinent that ranged from Siberia to the Yukon that was never glaciated. This was maybe 30-40,000 years ago. Because so much of the world’s water was tied up in glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere, the sea level dropped by several hundred feet exposing the continental shelf between North America and Asia. We were fascinated to find out why this area, so far north, had not been glaciated while areas to the east and much further south were covered with glaciers up to a mile thick. The answer was the high mountains to the south that wrung out most of the moisture, leaving little to form snow. This is still true today, causing much of this northern area to have cold desert conditions.
Scientists assume that people followed the animals across that grassy savannah. Some of the most interesting fossil and bone remains that have been found in the Yukon and Alaska include giant 400-pound beavers, woolly mammoths, giant sloths, short nosed bears, and giant lions. One of the really fascinating things studied through this center is the local Indian legends about giant creatures and monsters. Archeologists have been able to follow some of those legends to find bone remains of wooly mammoths and other creatures. There are also legends about how the large monster sized animals were made smaller like the ones we have today. Very cool as a storyteller. Patti was awestruck at the idea of stories being passed along from 30,000 years ago or more. This museum did a fine job of integrating science and story, working closely with the First Nations peoples.At about 4:00, we drove around downtown exploring a bit, and then, we were ready to stop! It was great to find a nice downtown hotel and take the evening off with resting, reading, and cooking a meal in the microwave. Even nonstop drivers and cultural explorers need an evening off. Patti had a brief conversation with a wildlife photographer talking about some of adventures shooting photos in the wilderness.
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