The mosquitoes told us to pack it up at Boya Lake. The rumbling thunder chimed in with agreement. Haines Junction was nearly 450 miles away. When T@G requested we take a shower sooner rather than later, we packed Boss, put T@G on the hitch, and prepped for an EARLY departure the next morning.
There comes a point when you just want the scenic drive to end. That is the motto we are proposing for Highway 37 in north British Columbia. The picturesque lake becomes commonplace, the trillions of trees become tedious and you revel in a burnt out stretch of regrowth or a change in the type of gravel on the road. You’re dirty and mosquito bitten.
Because we had left at 4:30 a.m. out of Boo ya, we had forgone coffee and breakfast. The micro-town of Junction 37 was just up the road. When we arrived prior to 6 a.m., we discovered the obvious – there are no 24 hr coffee shops in Junction 37. Lucky for us, the gas pumps worked because the next fuel stop was more than 100 miles away. Picking up the famous ALCAN Highway, we rejoiced in the fuel gauge on full even though our bellies were on empty.
Sometime around 7am, after a pack of toasty cheese crackers and half a banana, we pulled into the Continental Divide Alpine Resort and RV park where the marquis promised home cooked meals and baked goods. Suffice to say, we drank the coffee but passed on the breakfast and plastic wrapped muffins in favor of a chat with the chef about her travel bucket list.
The remote Canadians we’ve engaged with are talkers. They want to tell you all about their Florida vacation, their uncle who lives in Florida or their dream to go to Florida. One drip coffee later we were on the road sharing an apple and looking for lunch.
If you think about the last time you went some extended period of time without bathing you probably have a memorable story to go with it. Our story has become familiar. Gut it out til you find a shower of opportunity. Sometimes that’s a military base gym or occasionally a bag of water hanging from a tree.
This time it was a rental. $8 each gets you the code to a private washroom at the Caribou RV Park in Whitehorse. Not a spa experience, but hot water, strong pressure, a washcloth and a bar of soap changes your entire outlook on the day. We loved it so much we stayed and did laundry, even swapping books – Jo Nesbo for Samuel Champlain and the conquering of Canada.
Whitehorse is the capital of the Yukon Territory located in the southwest corner of the country, Thirty eight thousand people live in the city while 48,000 live in all the the Yukon. Our drive by crash of the Save-On grocery store was all we saw, but from the Al-Can it looked a lot like Prince George. While we want to see it all, we have to prioritize and this leg was all about Kluane National Park which was still two hours away.
By supper time, it had been a very long day. Pitching camp in Canada’s best-kept-secret National Park, Kluane, we huddled into a fire in an effort to fend off the mosquitos. 10 hours on the road, two loads of laundry, grocery shopping for the week, and a ‘spa’ day filled a day that began at the break of dawn (4:30 am) and ended at sunset (10 pm). Now, that’s making use of the Midnight Sun.
