Strange Things Done.....: Thank God for Pubs!

Whitehorse continued to entertain us, with another full day on Sunday. We had a nice clear, warm, sunny day so headed off to the Yukon Wildlife Preserve, to see if we could catch sight of some of the wildlife we'd been unable to spot along the roads so far. We had a choice of a bus tour through the area, or do a self-guided 5 km walk. Being thrifty, we chose the latter, and spent a little over 3 hours walking the roads to see Wood Buffalo, Caribou (well, sort of - even here they hide a bit), mountain goat, thinhorn sheep, lynx, arctic fox, red fox (okay....we've seen a few of these already), moose, mule deer, and elk. It's sort of like visiting a zoo I guess, but we did enjoy the walk, and seeing the animals.

MuskOx

Bison/WoodBuffalo

On the way back into town we stopped at a copper mining exhibit, as Whitehorse area is partially built on the history of copper mining. It was also worth another passport stamp.

Train Ride at the Coppermining exhibit

Back in town, we visited another First Nations Interpretive Centre, and returned to the steamboat, S.S. Yukon, for a better look around and to check out the movie which we'd missed the previous day.
After that and a bit of grocery shopping, we were ready to return to camp to eat that barbecued chicken meal we'd bought. It was still pleasant and early, so another hike/walk was in order. We walked from our camp to the nearby Yukon River, and crossed a bridge to an island to circumnavigate the island on a nature trail. Then, back across the bridge, we walked along the river to a large power dam project, with a very large fish ladder for migrating salmon to get by the dam.

A Beautiful War Canoe at Interpretive Centre

Power Dam/Fish Ladder on the Yukon River

By the time we'd returned to our tent, the wind was piping up and the temperature dropping. We spent a restless night in the tent, and packed up as the clouds rolled in. All of this was not unexpected....the weather forecast was correct in predicting this weather, with showers later....so we'd pre-booked a room at the Atlin Inn, in Atlin B.C., some 225 km southeast of Whitehorse. The showers held off for most of our drive, and we were able to stop at White Mountain for a short (1.5 km) hike up the mountain to look for mountain goats (nope - good thing we'd seen them at the preserve!). We passed a sow bear with three cubs, and stopped for a pleasant lunch (yup - leftover chicken and salad) beside Como Lake. We'd originally had plans to maybe spend the solstice north of the Arctic Circle, but we are now more than 500 miles south of that, so Atlin sounded like a good alternative, being quite scenic and still fairly far north. We found that there is only one restaurant in town which closes at 7 PM, and most of the town is shut down. But it has a lot of potential for a toursit mecca, and they even have a Music Festival here (July 8-9) headlining Bruce Cockburn. We checked into the Atlin Inn, a very nice, clean place.....and they have wi-fi. We did a walk around town (3 streets) and then headed to the restaurant,but a sign on the door apologized for the fact they had to close for the day. Hmmmm.....we did have cheese and crackers in the car, so planned on a simple dinner. But - back to our hotel, the proprietor had heard the news, and put on smokies in the bar....so we had a few beers with smokies for dinner, and chatted with the locals - a very friendly bunch. So thank God for pubs....without this one, dinner would be a few crackers and cheese! Then back to our room to write up this posting and eat dessert (cherries left over from the previous day). Tomorrow we'll be back eastbound on the Alaska Highway, likely stopping a few hundred km east, at Teslin.