Klondike Highway: Yukon Territory

On July 9th we took the Alaska Highway to where it joins the Klondike Highway just West of Whitehorse then headed North. We traveled only 21 miles so that we could stay at Takhini Hot Springs to try out some more "therapeutic soaking" and to give us the opportunity to see Lake Laberge, made famous by Robert Service in his poem, "The Cremation of Sam McGee". Steve is famous among friends and relatives for his recitations of this chilling work and we both wanted to see the lake for ourselves. It turned out to be a clear, rugged and gorgeous 40 mile long lake (pics 2 and 3), not nearly so forbidding as portrayed in the poem (Of course it was frozen in the poem).

At our campsite in Takhini, Steve began his new avocation of creating Inukshuks (pic 1). They have been used for centuries by Alaskan Native peoples, notably the Inuit, as a message of friendship, sign of presence, to provide direction, etc. Pic 4 shows a sky above our campsite which appears to be set afire by the sunset (around 1 a.m.). It was in the Yukon where we began to appreciate the wonderful, very long daylight hours of the North. Pic 5 is Five Finger Rapids, visable on the Yukon River from the Klondike highway. River steamships used to "shoot" the rapids, carrying miners and their gold from the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush.