Tok to Whitehorse - Things we missed the first time, or why you should always travel a highway at least twice.

Today we backtracked for 380 miles and we are in Whitehorse tonight. We had a chance to find some things we had missed on the trip up. The first were the mountains that dominated the southern horizon, that the smoke had obscured earlier. Turns out the route was a lot more scenic than we had originally thought - first the Alaska Range and then the Wrangell-St. Elias range, the two just sort of merging with each other somewhere near the Canadian border. The second was the border markers. Here you have the sign welcoming you to Alaska. There was also one facing the other direction welcoming you to the Yukon.

A stele and line on the pavement marked the actual border.

Someone had told us that part of the treaty between Canada and the U.S. required that you should be able to see from one end of the border at the Arctic Ocean to the other end by sighting between markers set in a cleared 60 foot wide strip. Sure enough, from this marker you could see the cleared strip, visible here stretching south. Looks rather like an electric highline right of way.

The third thing we had missed was a little museum in Burwash Landing in the middle of nowhere - the Kluane Museum of Natural History. Built largely by volunteers and contributions, using a building that was supposed to be a Catholic church, it was outstanding. The displays were well thought out and well executed, covering the animals of the area, the native peoples, and the native minerals. If you ever come this way, watch for it, somewhere between Beaver Creek and Haines Junction. And it only cost $2.95 Canadian for us senior citizens (so THERE, $30 drive to a glacier!).

We had a couple of good animal sightings to cap the day. We saw a cow and bull elk engaging in a little lead up to the rutting season - he was chasing her and she was being coy. And a bald eagle landed on the road ahead of us, forcing us to slow way down to avoid hitting it. We didn't see what little delicacy it was scoping out, but it took off again and flew right past the passenger side window.

Tomorrow we have a short drive south to Skagway where we will spend three nights.