Egads! Last day of vacation...

(Warning: Lots of pics in this post. Give it time to load...)

Sigh.

'Tis the last day of vacation, and thus far it has been spent eating breakfast, lazing around, and playing Scrabble with Steph and her brother.

Actually, that's a pretty good summary of the last week - seeing as how I haven't updated much since the 10th.

With the exception of a couple days, pretty much all we've done is laze around, relax, amble into town for a bit then amble back. It's been glorious to do absolutely nothing.

However, there have been a couple of adventures to tell about.

We were planning on going to Dawson City on Saturday, but there was heavy smoke from forest fires in Whitehorse and apparently it got worse the farther North you went, and Dawson was apparently enveloped with smoke. Considering Steph's asthma and the fact that she's pregnant (oh, yeah, by the way for those of you who don't know, I'm going to be a Dad in January), we decided it was not a good idea to head up there.

So insdead, we just laid around doing nothing. It was wonderful. I did, however, play golf at a very nice little golfcourse just outside of Whitehorse. A quaint little par-36 9 hole course. I played relatively well, +2 through the first 6 holes, until I exploded on a tricky 7th hole and then proceeded to completely lose my game, finishing quite horribly to end at +6.

Anyway, like I said, there were two very exciting journeys which we took, which are detailed below.

Journey 1: Monday August 15 (this was the drive)
A drive to Kluane National Park and Destruction Bay

Since the smoke was starting to clear up in Whitehorse, we decided that Monday (a local holiday) would be a good day to journey into Kluane national park.

The first stop on the drive was Haines Junction - a typical, tiny, depressed Yukon town. Perhaps the only notable things about Haines Junction were the wasps that would congregate around the front of your car, feasting on the splattered bug remains - the instant we stopped the car anywhere, before you could even get out. There would easily be 20 or 30 wasps. Thankfully, they were more interested in the dead bugs than they were us.

The only other thing notable about this place was the little "snack stand" that we stopped at. We ordered a cheeseburger, fries and a can of ginger ale. Total cost? $14.00.

So we then filled up with gas (I never thought I would say "thank god" I was driving a Kia Rio, but it only cost $35 to fill the tank ... and at $1.145 a litre, that's a good thing - the highest we saw anywhere was $1.165 per litre) and headed North-West towards Kluane and the mysterious "Destruction Bay".

Unfortunately, as we got further north, the smoke intensified. However, we still managed to see some interesting sights along the way, like this:

Well, I guess you've still got to train them, snow or no snow...

The drive continued and I became more and more disappointed that we were missing these great vistas and panoramas because of all the smoke.

We approached a turnoff towards "Kluane Lake B&B", which we decided would be interesting to check out. I'm very glad we did. On the way in, we passed by a very fascinating abandoned village. There were probably around 10 or 15 abandoned log cabins, some abandoned kennels, and whatnot. It was quite interesting, albeit a bit creepy at the same time.

View of an abandoned house, taken from the "backyard"

This house was very big - it was either some sort of community house, or it was a rich person's house. I figure this as it has shingles for a roof, instead of dirt with trees growing from it.

Shot of a few of the houses, with an abandoned and rusting truck in the background.

Beyond the abandoned village was Kluane Lake, which was stunningly beautiful, not to mention huge. It may have been the smoke and haze which made it look bigger than it was, since you couldn't see the end sometimes (the mountains disappearing into the haze) but even with that taken into consideration, it was still a pretty big lake.

The water was unbelievably blue and clear; from some angles it looked like we were in the Carribean. It wasn't actually very cold either, I wanted to jump right in, but didn't.

The rest of the trip was somewhat uneventful, although the views were nice. None of the pictures turned out particularly well, and Destruction Bay - which I had hoped would be somewhere interesting, based on the name - was not interesting at all and instead was a gas station, small school, restaurant, a car repair garage, and some houses.

On the way back, we did get lucky to get our first sight of wildlife on the trip - a beautiful eagle. Unfortunately, the eagle was quite a ways off and even with my zoom lens, I wasn't able to get very close to him before he flew away. Nevertheless, I did get this decent shot (fixed up a bit with Photoshop):

And so, that was about it for this journey.

Our next journey was much more eventful, exciting, and offered many more opportunities for photographs.

Journey 1: Tuesday August 16
A drive to Skagway, Alaska and a ride on the White Pass & Yukon Route

On Tuesday we rose early, at about 6:30am, showered, drove down to Tim Horton's for some breakfast, and then headed south towards Skagway. This was the same drive we had done earlier on the vacation, but this time we intentionally left very early so we would have lots of time to stop and take pictures, poke around, etc. I had also made reservations for the "Summit Excursion" of the YR&WP railway for the princely sum of $89usd per person. The train was scheduled to leave at 12:45, Skagway time, which was 1 hour behind Whitehorse. So we had plenty of time.

The initial parts of the drive aren't very interesting, although just as you leave Carcross you come up on this creepy old abandoned ... something. There are no signs to explain what it is, but it appeared to possibly be an old gas station, or perhaps something related to mining (turns out, after doing some research, it is an old processing mill for a nearby mine).

Again, this was slightly surreal, creepy, and fascinating all at the same time.

As you crossed the border into BC, you find that the scenery changes (as I mentioned in my last post) into something much more interesting and beautiful. Crystal clear glacial lakes surrounding rocky islands and terrain, covered with pine trees each at most six feet high. However, and this was cause for concern at the time - there was some fog. And then there was more fog. And then there was even more fog, so thick and heavy you could barely see the road ahead. Giant tour buses would emerge from the fog and zoom past on the other side of the highway, going (it seemed) way too fast for the conditions.

This was about all you could see in front of you.

The fog didn't clear up much at all as we descended towards Skagway, but we were still able to get a shot of the "spectacular" Bridal Veil Falls. These falls were apparently "stunning", according to some tourist info we had read about them. While the falls were certainly very nice, I wouldn't classify them as "stunning":

The fog, along with a longer exposure, combine to make what I think is a very nice effect.

We continued the descent towards Skagway, getting across the border no problem. We also descended out of the fog, which was good, although I was worried our trip on the WP&YR would be worthless if the fog didn't fade, as the train goes as high as we were on the road.

As you approach Skagway, you can take the opportunity to drive over to the starting point of the Chilkoot Trail, a famous mining route. So we decided to drive towards it. Unfortunately, the start of the trail is nothing particularly interesting, as it's just a trail off to the side of the road. We didn't have time to explore it at all. However, the drive was certainly worthwhile as we got to see more wildlife. Specifically, a family of either seals or sea otters (difficult to tell since it was just their heads peeking over the water - but I figure they were probably sea otters), and another eagle, this one thankfully I was able to get nice and close to (although there was barely any light thanks to the sun, to the picture didn't turn out too great):

This is all you ever saw of them. You'd think he could have been friendly and done a flip or something. Sheesh. How rude.

Managed to get this one just as he was landing in the tree.

Again, had to do some photoshopping to brighten it up a bit, as there was very little light at the time - it was a quick edit, too, so it didn't turn out very good, pretty blotchy.

All right. Next it was on to the train. This train is an "engineering marvel" - it took 2 years, 2 months & 2 days to build and climbs nearly 3,000 feet in under 30 miles. The line has a grade of on average 2%, with a maximum of 3.2% - which apparently, if you're an engineer, means something and it's very impressive.

Anyway, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Into the tunnel we go...

This was the train ahead of us going over a bridge.

Remember the "spectacular" Bridal Veil Falls? Turns out that where I took that first pic was just the start of it. It then tumbles 3,000 feet more into the valley below. Nice.

This used to be the world's largest steel cantilever (not sure if I spelled that right) in the world. It's no longer in use - the train goes through a tunnel instead.

That's it for the pictures from the WP&YR - if you're ever in Whitehorse, or near Skagway - do yourself a favour and take this train ride. It is one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen, both from a scenery and "holy shit they put a train up here" perspective.

We hung around Skagway for a while, but it's nothing impressive - just a huge tourist trap for all the cruise ship tourists. It was an interesting mix, though, of cheap junk and over-the-top jewelry shops ($55,000 ring, anyone? $15,000 watch?).

And so we began the journey back to Whitehorse. The fog cleared up, which was great as we were able to see some more spectacular scenery and some more wildlife. Again, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves on this one:

We really could not believe our eyes at this one - a family of bears. Looks like a mom bear, a teen and two cubs, but its hard to tell. They ran across the highway right in front of our car, and thanks to the zoom lens, we managed to get a bunch of shots of them. We stopped at the side of the road and did not get out of the car, even though they were quite far away.

They then climbed back over the guardrail behind us and ran across the highway again, then disappearing into the valley below.

The crystal clear blue water and unusual terrain of this area is amazingly beautiful.

And so, the sun begins to set on this vacation, and soon it is time to return to the real world...