Entering Yukon Territory

Today we drove into Yukon Territory and connected with the Alaska Highway for the first time. 

The welcome sign decribes the Yukon as "larger than life".  I believe it.

Lupine had taken the place of dandelions along the sides of the road, and the brush was cut back about thirty feet on each side to help prevent accidents with the wildlife.

My first impression of the Yukon was vastness.  The land seemed to spread out for miles in wide valleys with the ever-present backdrop of the mountains.

Soon we came to the Continental Divide. One of the information kiosks there explained that the white spruce is the most common conifer in the Yukon, and the most widely distributed.  The mature trees are 23-66 feet tall.  An average mature white spruce can produce 8,000 cones in a good year.  Each cone has 140 seeds.  Now, if we only knew exactly how many white spruce trees there are in the Yukon we could come up with a good math problem for fourth graders!

We stopped for a cup of coffee at Dawson Peaks Resort and RV Park.  David Hett and Carolyn Allen are the owners.  They have built up this establishiment on their own, first they designed and built it, and now they are serving as hosts, caretakers and chefs.  It is a very nice place.  As we entered the restaurant we met Craig and Sue from Iowa who were travelling in a 5th-wheeler.  It was Sue's birthday so we joined them for a little celebration of coffee and a some of Carolyn's famous rhurbarb pie ... a' la mode of course! 

Before we left I bought a copy of Dead North by Sue Henry, a local mystery writer. This story ends at Dawson Peaks Resort and David and Carolyn are characters in the book.  I am intrigued by stories set in the locale where I am travelling.  It makes the reading and the travelling more fun.

In the late afternoon we finally came to the overlook above the town of Teslin and the Nisutlin Bay Bridge.  We got a beautiful view of Teslin Lake and the town nestled between the lake and the Nisutlin River.  In the Tlingit language Teslin means "long narrow waters".  The lake is 886 miles long and averages two miles across.

                                                                        

That night we parked in the Teslin Lake Yukon Government Park. We had a view of the lake from our site and a path leading down to the stony beach.  From the beach we could see Dawson Peaks in the distance.   These peaks were once called Three Aces.  The Teslin people called them the "weather mountains" because the cloud formations around the peaks announced weather changes. 

The Tlingit legends tell of a time when the world was young and Animal Mother gave birth to the animals in a grassy basin high in the Three Aces.

Being in the Yukon excited me.  It felt like as if I on the edge of two civilizations, with one foot in the world of rhubarb pie a' al mode and published writers, and the other gently placed in a grassy basin high in the Three Aces listening to legends of old.

I liked the thought of "when the world was young".

I liked the thought of the Yukon being bigger than life.

I liked being here now.