Glacier-fed Lake Kluane in Silver City, YK 61.006230° N, 138.440259° W day two—234 miles to Tok, AK.
A week of driving through prairie in North Dakota and Saskatchewan turned to rolling hills in Alberta, then to step, narrow mountainous roads with giant glacier-rounded peaks in British Columbia, then to snow-capped jagged peaks in Yukon.
British Columbia, Canada
We passed over a river through an old iron bridge that barely looked wide enough for two cars, and questionably low. A river rushed through deep gorge below, and shortly after the view changed from hills to rugged mountains and tall, gangly spruce. The trees looked more like spikes, and in between mountains lay flat valleys with trees burned in vast areas here and there, often only on one side of the roadway.
Just that first day in the mountains we saw a herd of wood bison right along the edge of the roadway with several little calves in two, a mid-size brown bear, seven total black bear, a random goat on the roadside, and a huge long bison bull grazing on the edge of the highway.
I looked on my GPS app for a peaceful wilderness location to stay in overnight and found a free camping area at Lake Igna in British Columbia. The dirt road was pretty questionable at first, but just as we were wondering if we’d have to back up a mile the camping area came into view. We made friends with a fellow camper who had the sweetest little boy. We shared moose-burger tacos around the fire while Danny tried to teach her young son hide-and-seek.
Danny isn’t used to little kids and didn’t understand he couldn’t count to ten or have patience to look for him for more than two minutes before losing interest—then refused to share his gold paint marker which led to a meltdown. We decided it was time to turn in, and were gone before everyone else was up in the campground.
Yukon, Canada
Not long after passing the Yukon line, we hunkered down in a wooded spot just off the road for the night. It was right beside a gorge with a massive whirlpool that could be viewed from a cliff overlooking the mineral-rich aqua meltwaters below surging over rapids. It was astonishing to fathom that this is the low-water season while looking down on the water a hundred feet below.
We left early the next morning to put some miles on, and had made it a good 20-minutes before I realized we’d lost our special selfie stick tripod made for our Insta360 camera, and had to turn back. Danny had dropped it on our hike and I thought we’d never find it on the path we took, but amazingly he did in under a minute. We ran back to the RV that Kevin had barely had time to turn around, and were back on the road in no time.
We stayed in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada for two days at Hi Country RV Park to refresh our tanks, do laundry and have a reliable place to be for the start of Kevin’s work week. The first morning there, a yahoo ran heavy machinery directly in front of our site for hours. It was quite obvious they weren’t very skilled at moving and leveling gravel which made the extremely loud process last much longer than necessary. This was of course while Kevin was trying to work. It seems like every RV park we have stayed in hasn’t been enjoyable.
A tube in the back of my coffee maker cracked. I’ve been mixing grounds and water in a small soup pot and pouring it over the stainer basket into a mug. That was working great, until this morning when I poured in the cream there was a large lump. I thought the cream had gone bad, so I gave it a good, long sniff—it smelled fine. It had begun turning to butter from all the rough roads. I stirred it in, and went on with my morning. An hour later the phone rang, it was a recruiter for a job I’d applied for the day before.
We left as soon as Kevin’s lunch break started to make it to our next stop at Lake Kluane, where we stayed last night and will through the day today. I spent my time en route taking skills tests on Indeed and edited a few videos and images from the days before.
Lake Kluane is the largest lake in the Yukon at 158 square miles with at an elevation of 2,562 ft.
When we arrived, it was hard to believe it was a free place to stay given the stunning 180° mountain view and wide, well-maintained parking area. The wide beach stretched for miles and had little streams carrying minerals and gravel outwash from under the ancient glacier hidden in the jagged mountains beyond. The incredibly clear, cool water revealed colorful pebbles rounded by the passing of time.
Danny and I explored the beach with Chip while I waded in to reach the best rocks. Some people stopped to fill jugs of water and appeared to say a blessing, before leaving in their van. I found it funny they didn’t stay long in a place they obviously found to be special.
As soon as Kevin was clocked out for the day, I gave him a haircut overlooking the northern Rockies. We wandered along the beach together and marveled over the diversity of colorful pebbles, strange blooming plants growing in the sand—and caribou poop.
A few other campers had set up in the large parking lot last night. One man knocked on the door to ask if we were allowed to park overnight. I told him there were no signs stating otherwise and it had been listed as a free spot to stay on my camping app—but that I didn’t have authority to grant permission, but he could pretend I did if it made him sleep better. He laughed, thanked me, and set up for the night.
It was quiet last night other than the occasional passing vehicle, and when some wind kicked up across the lake just after midnight—though it’s hard to tell time now that it never gets dark. I knew that would be a thing, but still somehow find it surreal and even peeked out the window to see where the sun was in the night.
This morning was perfectly calm and clear on the lake as I took a walk with Chip. It’s been hard to find any personal space or time to think with three of us in such a small space. Danny is a very curious, talkative kid who has a very hard time listening and letting me have more than ten minutes without interruption. It was good to have a half-hour to walk silently with my coffee mug in hand I’d bought from the tourist-trap gift shop back in Whitehorse. I kept my thoughts in the present and focused on the absolute beauty, and set nagging to-dos and anxieties aside. I breathed deeply of the fresh mountain air and watched Chip zip around from the edge of the water, up to the dunes, and back.
