Yukon Ho!

By Morgan Chambers

I had about two weeks off between the semesters and had a yen to go home. Unfortunately I couldn't afford a plane ticket. However, a friend of mine was interested in seeing the Yukon and offered the use of her car if I wanted to drive up (with her of course). I've never driven to Whitehorse so I thought it might be something I should try. This is our story (or at least part of it).

Its pitch black, 1:00 am, and I'm driving down an unlit gravel highway (trying to stay under 90km/h, so I have a hope in hell of stopping if a moose steps out in front of me). In an effort to stay awake I review the events leading me to this folly: 9:30 am Sunday, Vancouver - Deirdre arrives at our house, we load our bikes onto the back of her small green Civic, toss my 2 bags and miscellanous stuff into the back seat, I say my good-byes, and we're OFF! The weather is fabulous and driving isn't a chore (yet). 2:00 pm Sunday, Merritt - First stop of the trip (aside from the Coquihalla toll booth), we need gas and ice cream. We've decided that it may very well be a moral imperitive to stop at every Dairy Queen between Vancouver and Whitehorse. (We already missed quite a few, but it's a great excuse to stop.) 5:00 pm Sunday, Williams Lake - Stopped for more ice cream and a chance to stand up and stretch. Weather is still beautiful, and we should be arriving in Prince George on time. 8:30 pm Sunday, Prince George - Arrive at Ester's Inn. Drag the bikes off the car (still attached to the rack) and into the hotel room. Go out in search of dinner (Prince George does have a Subway) and a mailbox. Take our subs and go back to the hotel room. Manage to stay awake for about 45 minutes of "Hard To Kill" before crashing. 7:30 am Monday, Prince George - Back on the road, but we now have a full tank of gas (and fresh toast!). Looking forward to less civilization (read speed traps) and more wildlife. 9:00 am Monday, somewhere in the Rockies - It's raining. Visibility is really bad, sure glad I'm not driving. 12:00 pm Monday, Dawson Creek - Our lunch date had a meeting in Chetwynd (which we just passed through) and can't make it. Have a nice lunch at Boston Pizza and hit the road. Somewhere between Dawson Creek and Fort Nelson - I see the first moose of the trip (D is asleep), it's dead. This bodes well! (As of Ft. Nelson the wildlife count was one moose, one porcupine, one rabbit (all dead), three deer, and onecoyote (live).) 5:30 pm Monday, Fort Nelson - We've truly hit the boonies - no Dairy Queen, have to settle for some wannabe. We will now start driving through wilderness (there are watch for moose and caribou signs every couple of kilometres). 8:30 pm Monday, Liard Hot Springs - Stop for gas. The guy who pumps it could be a character straight out of Northern Exposure. He tries to convince us to buy pins to help save the woolly spiders (apparently akin to the South American tarantula) which get squashed trying to cross the highway. He then tells us that we really should go for a dip in the hot springs explaining that everyone who does ends up meeting their future spouse and then proceeds to give us examples of couples he knows who met in the springs. We give it a miss. 12:00 am Tuesday, Watson Lake - Good thing we stopped for gas in Liard, the only thing open in Watson is a card lock gas station. Switch drivers - Deirdre promptly goes to sleep (she's not driving). Istart reconsidering the driving to Whitehorse tonight plan, sleep is looking REALLY good.

Back to reality (or some version of it) ... A truck has just passed me doing about 110 km/h, I'm amazed. Even at the speed I'm going its sometimes hard to figure out which way the road turns. Deirdre wakes up and asks what the weird light patches in the sky are. I look up, the Northern Lights are out. They are bright enough that we can see them quite well even with the headlights on. D watches them for a while, and I think about stopping so I can watch too (but if I stop we might not get started until the morning).

Well, time does pass and, after 3.5 hours of trying to pick out familiar landmarks in the dark, we finally get to a stretch of road I know. About 4:30 am we get to the outskirts of Whitehorse and are almost out of gas. Can we make it to my Mom's place? Probably, but I don't want to take any chances (yes, there are all night gas stations in Whitehorse). We reach Mom's place in one piece. Unload the bikes in the dark (it's not quite light yet). I wake up my Mom to tell her we've arrived, and head off to bed. Spending 31 of the last 43 hours on the road is definitely my limit.

10 days later, we've packed up the car again and are ready to head south. The last 10 days have been wonderful. We've been rock climbing, mountain biking, tried archery, bottled 10 dozen beer, stayed overnight at Dad's cabin, painted the trim on Mom's shop, baked cookies, butter tarts and syllabub, seen the scenic sights (Miles Canyon, Emerald Lake, The Carcross Desert, Carcross), been to comedy night at the bar, caught up on the gossip with my friends, fixed the bathroom tap, and generally had a relaxing vacation. Am I ready to go back to school? Not on on your life!

So what did I get out of this vacation? I got to see the Yukon through the eyes of someone who'd never been there and rediscover all the things I tend to take for granted. Case in point: most mornings we would get up, putter around the house and then eat lunch on the deck. It was about 20 degrees on the deck and, yet, the pond below my house was still frozen. I take this for granted as a normal spring occurance, but to Deirdre it was strange. Another thing that it took D a while to get used to was what time it got dark. When we were out at the cabin, we were reading by daylight until about 10pm, and it didn't get truly dark until about 11. I barely noticed (even after 5 years of university, I'm still not used to it getting dark before 11 during the summer), but D was pretty amazed. I'm just sorry that we weren't there at the end of June when it barely gets dark at all. But what else did I learn, you ask? Well, Muncho Lake has the cleanest outhouses of anywhere I've ever been, I can hit the broad side of a barn using a bow and arrow (but that's about the limit of my aiming abilities), driving through the Yukon in the pitch black isn't pleasant, 10 dozen beer really cuts down your gas mileage, repelling is the scariest part about rock climibing, moose like to come out at dusk, bears don't look both ways before crossing the road, and I can spend 14 days straight with Deirdre and we don't fight. In hindsight, I would have set aside more time for the drive up (and down). Two days is plenty if you don't mind driving 14 hours a day (more than enough if you are insane - my brother's record is leaving Whistler and arriving in Whitehorse 25 hours later). However, some of the scenery along the way is spectacular and I would've liked to stop and enjoy it.

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