Merry Kiss Moose. Our motor coach to the White Pass narrow gauge railroad.
So many spectacular sights as our wee train snaked its way up White Pass to the Fraser train station.
Countless snowpack-fed waterfalls,
Endless mountains,
Lush valleys,
Fraser-bound trains hugging the side of the mountain… wait, what???
Girders in the mist, ah, no: trestles in the clouds. This retired train bridge was an engineering marvel when it was built. Our trestle had tracks on the other end.
Many mountaintop lakes here at 3000 feet.
Fraser, BC is the northern terminus of our train ride towards the Yukon Territory, the YT. Definitely not a tourist town, it’s basically a train station, Canadian Customs and Border Control, and housing for border crossing employees. Transferred back to our coach.
Now on the Southern Klondike Highway for an hour before turning west on the Alaska Canadian Highway.
The ALCAN was first proposed in the 1920’s, but funding rejected several times by Canada because it wouldn’t be a great benefit to much of Canada. The bombing of Pearl Harbor drastically changed that dynamic, with the common threat to the North American west coast. Both countries signed on to the project later in 1942 and it opened to the public in 1948. It’s currently 1387 miles long, running from Delta Junction AK to Dawson Creek BC.
Brief stop in Carcross to stretch and get a cuppa joe. More town name origins: CARibou CROSSing, for exactly what you’re thinking. There’s several crossings like that, Carcross got that name to distinguish it from other caribou crossings. Now you know.
School here runs from K-6; middle and high students commute to Whitehorse for the week then commute home for the weekend.
Another brief stop at jaw dropping Emerald Lake. The myth is, this is where the Northern Lights go to spend the summer.
Arrived in Whitehorse around 2:30pm. Whitehorse, capital of Yukon Province since 1952, is a bit more metropolitan than, say, Skagway. A bit chilly but sunny. Got a snack and drink at their Tim Hortons (Starbucks’ got nothin’ on TH) and back to our room for a before dinner nap.
Sorry, no pics here except for our bed bears.
And this. If you want to start your car when it’s -30 degrees, you have a block heater to keep the engine oil from having the consistency of molasses, from the fridge.
June 5th travel: 20 miles on the White Pass Railroad from Skagway AK to Fraser BC, 88 miles by motor coach from Fraser to Whitehorse YT.
That’ll do for today. G’night.