We'll upload photos later next week when we return to civilization & high speed internet.
After a few photos of the Sign Post Forest we left Watson Lake. The Sign Post Forest was started in 1942 by a homesick US Army soldier who put up a sign stating how many miles it was to his home town from Watson Lake. Today travelers are encouraged to add signs to the collection which numbers over 70,000. (I found a sign from a couple in Whitby my former home town for 35 years.)
Although Watson Lake claims to be the "Gateway to the Yukon", it was depressing to see all the closed business as we rode through the town. The hotel we stayed in, had the original early 1900's atmosphere. Thankfully, the room was fine.
Not much wild life today. In fact, we only saw one brown bear who high tailed it into the woods when we slowed to take a picture of him.
The only other excitement was a kilometre of loose gravel & blinding dust. Over the winter as sections of the road broke up, the pavement is removed and is replaced with loose gravel until it could be rolled & tared. There had been several of these gravel sections over the past two days but this was the longest by far. Up to this point I had used the snowmobile over the water technique on these patches. Just give her & pray. That wasn't going to work this time. Fortunately, the flag person had seen us amongst a caravan of RV's. She motioned for us to move to the head of the line so we could go through first. Even with only Peter ahead of me I had to slow way down in order to see the road ahead. Eventually, we cleared the section & were on our way again. Wow!
We arrived in Whitehorse (my birthplace) about 6 PM. Needless to say I was excited. After unloading our gear, the hotel let us put our bikes in the parking. We were quite relieved to know they were safe, because there was a scuzzy bar next door with attendant drunks staggering around outside. (Suddsbury Friday night!)
We toured Main Street, had supper, then Peter & I went to a follies show which was entertaining in a silly kind of way. Dave went back to the room to see his team (Boston) loose.
The next day we all went different ways. I stayed in Whitehorse to be a tourist; Dave rode down to Skagway & Bennett Lake to checkout the start of the Chilkoot Pass. Peter continued on to Dawson City to recon the Dempster Hwy for us.
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