At Last - A Sunny Day!

Little did I realize when we left Hyder, Alaska, and toured up the Cassiar Highway through Dease Lake, Watson Lake, and Teslin (Yukon Territory), that we would be without internet service. 

The Fourth of July and days we spent in Skagway were the coldest, dampest, and windiest that we have had so far on our trip!  The layer-look was rampant.  You could tell the locals, because they were in shorts and flip flops, while the rest of us were layered up, hats, gloves, anything to help keep us warm. 

Spending the 4th of July in a small town and seeing a parade is the best way to spend the Fourth!  The kids parade was first, which was small but cute.  The big parade was amazing in its length for such a small town.  A group of bagpipe players and a small group of Royal Canadian Mounted Police in uniform were part of the parade.  Ships came and went while we spent four days there, helicopters and planes ferrying passengers, and of course the White Pass Yukon Railroad was right by the campground.  It was a busy place!

This picture kind of depicts the weather we had while there.  One night a man from Santa Fe, which is just north of Albuquerque, camped next to us.  The next night a venture crew that ferried in from somewhere packs and all came in and were headed out to do some hiking for a few days.  The 33-mile Chilkoot Trail is a popular hiking spot.

We arrived in Whitehorse to clouds and wind, but yesterday afternoon the sun finally made it's appearance.  We are all happy to see it!  It looks like it will be sunny today, too, and it's a free day for us.  We plan to go to the Canada Super Store for some groceries and tomorrow we head to Dawson City, Yukon Territory -- the place where the Klondike Gold Rush started. 

We currently have about 20 hours of daylight and when we arrive in Dawson City, we'll only have two hours of "night time."  It's called the Land of the Midnight Sun.  That will be our furthest point North on the tour -- we're only 150 miles from the North Pole.

Driving up out of Skagway we were on our own, meeting up at Carcross by 11:00 AM.  As usual, Wayne and I were the first ones out and we hit unbelievable fog all the way up the road.  We were happy that there wasn't a lot of traffic because it was very hard to see.  We didn't get a picture in front of the "Welcome to Alaska" sign that resembles the "Yukon Larger than Life" sign, because the fog was so thick we drove past it before we saw it and didn't figure you'd see the sign in a picture.

We are enjoying our trip and hope this finds everyone well!