So if you’ve been following along, I think it’s pretty apparent that some of the real highlights of our travels for me have been all the wildlife sightings! Since we began the trip through Canada to Alaska, my face has been pressed against the window on the lookout for animals, and so far we’ve seen some really fun ones, including foxes, swans, herons, marmots, seals, and more bald eagles than I can count. I have a list in the Turtle of all the animals we’ve spotted, which includes a running tally of all the bears we’ve encountered.

Shortly after we crossed over into Yukon, the total increased by three at once when we saw a mama bear with her two tiny cubs! I lost my mind. They even stayed close enough to the road as we drove by for me to get a few photos, which Andy had to remind me to do since I was too consumed by delight to remember to get my phone out. I’m so glad he did! Look at these sweethearts.

I added three marks to the list as we drove away, and soon afterward we took a detour to visit Watson Lake, YT. We thought we’d stay the night there, but the small town was so overcrowded and chaotic that we decided to resupply at the small grocery store, visit the famous Sign Post Village, and then get back on the road.

The Sign Post Village is an attraction that started when a homesick G.I. hung a sign for his hometown on a directional signpost in his army camp. Later, others began adding their own signs to the post, and as of today there are somewhere around 72,000 signs from all over the world there, hung on fences, trees and posts.

Well, now it’s closer to 72,002. . .

We happened to have two of those little Oregon license plates with our names printed on them in Andy’s toolbox (and a cordless drill), so we’re now officially part of the Sign Post Village! (Andy would probably like me to mention here that they’re even affixed with nice stainless steel screws. He was pretty excited about that detail.)

Our next stop was Whitehorse, YT—a good spot to grab a beer at Yukon Brewing and plan out the next few days. We’ve been in such remote and wild areas throughout northern BC and Yukon and the sporadic cell signals have left us more off-grid than usual. And since we never have any travel plans laid out more than a day or two in advance, we’ve been enjoying the good old-fashioned “roll into town, go to the Visitors Center, find a map, and hopefully it has tips on things to do in the area” approach. This pairs nicely with the “go to the local brewery, meet some locals, and ask them what’s fun around here” method.

But it is also nice to arrive in a town that’s large enough to have cell service (and a grocery store that carries flavored sparkling water because we’re addicted and are having a hard time getting our fix up here). That way we can come up with a general game plan that includes great hikes or museums, places to dump tanks and fill up with water, and fire up our favorite campsite apps to ensure we wake up to a lake as often as possible. (Fellow travelers, we enthusiastically recommend Allstays and iOverlander for finding perfect free sites. We’ve stayed at so many incredibly beautiful campsites and overnight parking spots that we never would have found on our own.)

The points of interest we visited in Whitehorse, however, were discovered without assistance from Google. As we drove into town, Andy saw a crazy-cool vehicle parked outside of the Museum of Transportation and declared that it would be our first stop the following day. And so it was. The museum was super interesting, and had some of the most inventive murals and displays we’ve ever seen. But the very best part (for one of us) was definitely the LCC-1 Overland Train, the only one of its kind in the world and the reason we went to the museum in the first place. Andy ogled and I took pictures.

We got a deal on admission if we visited both museums in town, so after having lunch at our dining table in the sunny parking lot we went to the Beringea Museum next door and enjoyed that quite a bit too. Our tour guide was excellent!

Not our tour guide.

We left Whitehorse—and Yukon altogether—and crossed back over the border into Alaska to visit Skagway.

On the way, we saw this:

Before getting to this:

One day in Skagway didn’t seem like it would be enough, but we also wanted to take the ferry into Haines so we bought a ticket for the following day and spent the rest of the day soaking in the town and shopping with the myriad cruise ship tourists. We took a brothel tour at the Red Onion Saloon, had a beer at the Brewery, and bought a few nice warm hats, which seemed like a good idea at the time even though it’s presently very warm and sunny up here.

 

The next day we loaded our house onto the ferry, and while Scout and Gracie took floating naps down below, we enjoyed the scenery from the bow. It’s a quick trip, and I wanted to stay on that ferry so much longer than we did. One of these days we’ll take a days-long ferry so I can read a book in my sleeping bag on an exterior top-deck lounge chair like we saw a few others doing and it really struck my fancy.

It’s such a pleasure to visit so many different towns and cities as we travel, and extra-specially fun when we really connect with a town. Well it happened again, this time in Haines, and though we’d planned on staying just a day we found ourselves enjoying the town for three! We had so much fun.

A definite thrill was getting to see the grizzly bears that fish in the Chilkoot river. Going to the spot they frequent was a bit of a zoo (pardon the pun) as all the tourists flock there at feeding time—us included. But it was worth the crowd; we saw a female grizzly casually swimming and picking at salmon one day, and two young ones crossing the road to the bridge to catch dinner the next evening. It was awesome.

We also were not surprised at how much we liked the Hammer Museum, since we’d been looking forward to it for days. Well worth the $5 admission, especially because the kids working there were so knowledgeable and ready to share interesting points about the hammers we were looking at. And there were 2,000 hammers to look at.

On our third day in Haines we got our fishing licenses and went to Chilkoot Lake to post up and see if we could catch some fish. The bears were making it look pretty fun, and I suppose all the fishermen dotting the river were a good sign that the humans were having some luck as well. We decided to go to the lake even though the river seemed to be the popular spot, as it was quieter there and with less of a chance of having to defend our catch (and our lives) from the hungry bears who more often frequent the river.

The weather cooperated beautifully, and as we cast we enjoyed the scenery as well as the company of the friendly people we met throughout the day. But the best part was the luck we had! Andy’s summary of the day went something like this: “Before we lived in the Turtle, that day of fishing would have been something to plan and look forward to all year, then remember all the next year. But today we just accidentally happened upon it and it was a most incredible day of fishing, and we could stay and do it again if we wanted!” It’s true, and we’re so grateful that we’ve been able to live our dream and have opportunities like this. What a day.

We were having so much fun we couldn’t stop casting until the sun started to go down around 10 p.m. and chilled us enough to drive us indoors. We cleaned and filleted the fish, then had some for dinner at “our spot” at a turnout by the ocean. All three nights we were in Haines we stayed at the same turnout, which we loved for the views and also that it was set back from the road enough that we could walk the animals around on their leashes with plenty of room to explore.

Gracie enjoyed perching on the barrier for maximum water gazing, and while she was sitting so nicely I told everyone to stay still so I could take a picture.

Nailed it!

Saying goodbye to Haines was difficult, but if we stayed any longer, we’d end up being locals. So we had one more Frisbee session at the park by the library and we drove on.

Back into the Yukon! Woo hoo!