White Horse Day 2 June 25, 2007

We spent a second day in Whitehorse today. Tomorrow morning we’ll get the tire replaced early, we hope, and then head on our way. We’re not sure what happened to the tire so we’ll have a mechanic look at the wheel bearings and axle first.

It was a fun day today. We slept in, something we haven’t done for a while, and then visited with our neighbors. We talked to several couples about their plans for the trip to Alaska. Each has a different route and different levels of experience. For some it was their first trip, some had traveled the Alaskan Highway several times before, and one person made the trip 23 years ago, when little of the road was paved. Breland had a great time talking about generators, inverters, and truck pulling power. Several of the couples were full-timers, living in their RVs year-round. Most were professionals before they retired and worked nine-to-five jobs. They all agreed that they wanted to travel and had spent too much of their lives in hotels in the past.

We then went to visit the fish ladder at the dam. No salmon were there, of course. They’ll run through around mid-August. After that we took a dusty side road to a lake. As I was taking a photo of the lake I heard pounding feet and a cow bell coming up fast behind me. Breland shouted “Gayle” just as the largest dog I’ve ever seen ran by. From the sound of his feet I’d expected a maddened bull, at least. His owner shouted and the dog wheeled around and ran past me again. The dog’s owner and his friend stopped to talk. They had four beautiful sled dogs with them. They race dog sleds in the winter and keep themselves and their dogs fit by hiking in the summer. The cowbells were bear bells. The lead dog had incredible blue eyes. There was one dog the owner called Lynx which was an unusual lynx-like color. It was really fun to meet this lively, very fit group of men and dogs.

A mile are so down from the lake we stopped in a marshy area with over 20 bald eagles perched in the trees around it. The small creek that runs through that marsh must be filled with fish!