Up, up and away

We just seem to keep going up!


After leaving Charlie Lake we continued up the Alaska Highway. By the end of the next day we reached Muncho Lake Provicial Park and found a groovy camp site right on the lake shore. It was beautiful! But alas, we couldn't stay up too late as we wanted to get an early start the next day.
One for Jez:

And so we did. After a not so early night having beer with the neighbour, we managed to hit the road by 8:45ish. Within a couple of hours we'd finally managed to get to Watson Lake, the home of Yukons famous Signpost Forest. It a pretty amazing place which has amassed over 60000signs... I'd hate to be the poor bugger that has to count them all. We couldn't leave without putting our own sign up, so in true Land Rover fashion we cable tied one of Charlies number plates to a post and then added a ShireLRC sticker for good measure. So if you are ever there, from the bottom of the steps, go left into the second row of signs and there you will see our plate :-)

From here we took the Cambell Highway (highway 4). A mere 370 odd miles... on gravel! Quite what we were thinking when we set off I'll never know, but we made it in about a days driving. In the first 3-4 hours of driving we only saw 5 other cars. Along the way we found "Yukons best kept secret", the town of Faro, population 370. It reminded us of Thornhill... on a bad day, so we turned around and left. I can't remember if it was the burnt out petrol station or the nasty looking 3-storey flats that made the place so appealing!
There were quite a few flies (understatement of the century), so we had to keep finding rivers to use to clean the windscreen, which worked quite well:


Not to worry though, the views are worth it :-)


Anyway... further points of interest along the way... at mile marker 150 we saw a Moose... and followed it as it tried to run away from us down the road... not the brightest of creatures, but cool nontheless! :-) And another black bear watching the world go by, and a Porcupine. I tell ya, the only way to see the wildlife here is to get off the main highways.

We awoke this morning to a frozen tent and it was blommin' cold! We later found out it was -1C in the nearest city at 7am this morning, so what it was in the mountains last night I don't know. Late this afternoon we finally made it to Dawson City, in the heart of the Klondike Gold rush country, passing the Dempster Highway. The Dempster is a 470mile dirt road ending at Inuvik. It has a reputation for killing vehicle tyres. Even the locals take 2 spares. At the beginning of the Highway is an info board which we thought we'd pull up at and read. We stopped, I got out the car and heard a hissing sound... the back offside tyre was deflating rapidly! and we had only been about 50metres up the Dempster! That was scary enough, we changed the tyre and headed off to Dawson a few miles up the road. So here we are, at a coampsite in the middle of town... quite literally! :-)

So here we are in Dawson City, in the middle of town... gonna go for a bite to eat now. Tomorrow we hit ALASKA!!! ONLY 67 MILES, WOW!! :-) (and a ferry ride! ;-) )

...anyway, I really must go and clean the bikes...