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Day 16
Our longest day of driving, we traveled through 560 miles of the Yukon. Man was it beautiful, but the surroundings didn't change like they have been over the past days so it got kind of monotonous every once in a while. I had plenty of stuff to occupy myself though so I never got to tired of all of it, which I would hate to do because of the just grandeur of everything I've been surrounded by. Soon after we left the campground (I had a headache from sleeping on a slightly deflated air-bed, but Cody the dog was in my tent so I stayed relatively warm) we drove through the area that was affected by the forest fires. It wasn't that bad of damage, only a small section of it looked like the kind of destruction that you see in Glacier. Along the side of the road periodically were those inflatable aboveground swimming pools filled with water in case the fire flared up again, I thought that was an interesting idea. Along the big grassy stretch on either side of the road at one point was a momma and baby bear eating a burnt carcass (I bet cooked meat is a rare delicacy for them). Along the way we saw quite a bit of buffalo in random locations, a few were absolutely massive. There was a grizzly chowing down on something on the side of the road, a little fox, and another black bear with two cubs! All road work is done on the highway in the summer (understandably) but it causes a few stretches probably about 5 so far each a few kilometers long, to be unpaved. In our recent driving and actually while I am writing this, the road feels like a mix between riding a horse and a roller coaster. It has constant undulations and doesn't really feel like potholes as much as just we are bouncing up and down sometimes with such a rhythm that i feel like I should be wearing a blazer with tan tights and a helmet. One of our few stops was at the town of Watson Lake where there is the famous sign-post forest. The "forest" is an area of about an acre at which the builders of the original Alcan Highway placed a sign-post with about 6 different signs on it pointing to places like Tokyo, New York and the home towns of a few of the workers with the distance in miles to that place. It has been a tradition since then for any passing traveler to add a sign to one of the many ten foot tall or so sign posts they have in the "forest." Being as unprepared as we were, we didn't have any additions but the assortment of signs was unbelievable. There are currently more than 64,000 and range from license plates and stolen street signs to hand carved and hand drawn signs. It was really quite a sight. In Watson Lake we went to the post office and got a commemorative Vancouver Ollympics quarter that is really a neat coin because the back is completely different than usual and in full color and the front has the olympic logo next to the queens head. It is really interesting in stores because everything even drink containers like coke and A&W cans are bilingual in English and French. Besides that stuff, we saw a liberty tax service that instead of the statue of liberty in the logo they have a maple leaf, that kinda made me laugh, and we went to "the real canadian superstore" which was pretty much a wal-mart but you had to rent the carts for a dollar. When you locked the carts back in the cart return though, it unlocked a compartment on the cart and gave you your dollar back. That store is also going to start charging a nickel per plastic bag in an effort to get people to start using the reusable grocery bag which I think is a really smart way to promote it. Got a Canadian Dry Green Tea there which was a really interesting taste bud sensation because there were about four distinct flavors. The drive when we weren't in civilization, aka most of it, was interesting because the landscape made me think of a tropical jungle island like Skull Island in King Kong or the Jurassic Park island (wow Jurassic is a really weird word). Wow the back window of the bed cover just shattered... but thats in the next blog. Anyway back to the landscape, a lot of the time you can see the road curving off in some random part of the view ahead of us which is really an awesome sight because since this is the only road around you know it is where we are heading, but it can also be a bit unnerving when you are tired and fatigued. In the monotonous parts of the trip I finished my 3rd book (On to Life the Universe and Everything), and I started writing a movie for no particular reason besides I had an idea and random movie scenes kept playing out in my head. Wow this road is ridiculous... Anyway I'll have another entry tonight... and it will be from Alaska!
Breakfast: None... apparently when you have a long day of driving its better to wake up late and not eat breakfast than to just get started early. (I don't really get it either don't worry)
Lunch: This really good "home-cooked" placed called Salley's that was really nothing much more than a husband and wife that opened up their kitchen. I had a tasty grilled cheese on thick bread with homemade tomato soup and root beer.
Dinner: Oh I forgot this part of the day, we got to our stop in Haines Junction, Yukon. Our campground made you pay a quarter per minute to shower, and our last campground didnt even have showers so we were all desperate for long hot showers and the adults were already fatigued from the day so the whole metered shower thing did not go over well. All the hotels in town were sold out so we drove an hour or so to the little community of Destruction Bay (sweet name I know) with a population of 34. There was situated a small motel with an amazing view of the lake. Arrived there at about 11 and had our leftover picnic makings for dinner because all the restaurants around were closed. The mosquitos there were absolute menaces. Massive swarms of these ginormous insects that had to be the result of some biohazardous accident followed us around, it was horrible! Then we went back to our room and got in are very inviting beds, but not before I took a picture out of our front door at midnight just to show that there was enough light that it could very easily be done. Oh, back to the whole dinner thing... Ham and cheese sandwich with dijonaise, salt and vinegar chips and water.
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