Heading South, around mid- August...

We are going south.  Our last three months have been one great trip, and now we are nearing the best part of it--making it home!  So lets hit the road.

This is the view from the road in Skagway as we head out.  The highway begins a steep 11 and a half mile ascent from sea level to 3,290 feet at an 11 % grade.  Whew!!  This is the reason why a lot of RV'ers come and go by water, but I guess if you have one of those big rigs you can afford the ferry.  There are more reasons than just cost why we don't take one.  We know there will be a lot of pull out and view points along the road, so there will be no problem.  These things you would not see on a ferry.  We can just imagine walking, riding horseback, sailing the lakes in the Klondike Gold Rush through these rugged mountains in the snow in 1898!!

Across the river gorge is the Skagway River and the White Pass Railroad, which we enjoyed when we visited here from a ship two years ago.  For more information on this important railroad go to  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Pass_and_Yukon_Route

My Dear Bride even got this picture of the train heading to Skagway on the narrow gauge rails.

This is the William Moore Bridge named after the Steamboat Captain we talked about in our last post.  This unique suspension bridge spans a 110 foot wide gorge over Moore Creek, 180 feet below.  You will notice a couple of bikers coming down.  There are services in Skagway that transport bikes and bikers to the top of the 11 1/2 mile high hill so they can just coast down to town.  (I could do that!)  We did also see a few go up using pedal power.

 



Here is the distant view of the bridge and the gorge it spans.

It is long climb.  They get a lot of snow up here in the wintertime, as you can see by the snow posts.

The highway twists and turns through the rocky valley of Summit Lake.  The subalpine landscape of stunted trees and lakes near the U.S. border is often referred to as a
"moonscape" making a transition zone between the treed lower elevations and the true alpine above the tree line.  The small, twisted alpine firs are call "mopheads" shaped by a combination of heavy snows and icy winds forming in their upper branches.  We have seen this quite often on our trip.

More of Summit Lake and the hills above.  As you have probably guessed we made it up the hill--no problem.

This is Jack Peak overlooking the Summit Lake valley.

This was the Canadian Customs Station:  Same questions, same answers; no problems.

                             Views on the road.

 Fireweed and Tutshi Lake

Fireweed

Rose Hips

Dall Peak

Lime Mountains above Tagish Lake

Bove Island on Tagish Lake

We continued on thru Carcross without stopping, over the Tagish cut-off, and back onto the Alaskan Highway.  We are covering ground that we (and you) have seen before--including the Nisultin Bay Bridge.  

If you recall this bridge is the longest on the Alaskan Highway at 1,917 feet. 

And on the other side of it is the Lakeshore RV park.  You may also recall that on the trip going north we traveled over a very dusty road.  Happy to say that it had been repaired by now.

Lakeshore RV Park on Teslin Lake, one of the biggest lakes in Yukon.  We camped overnight here twice.

Teslin Lake

 Yes---more Fireweed--but how can one not admire this color contrast, as many times as we have seen it?

The next day we stopped for a little lunch at the Wolfs Paw Trading Post and Restaurant.

The current owner is a woodworker and an artist.  This door he carved is but one example of his fine craftsmanship.

Another example is this "Old Woman In A Shoe", an extremely detailed and well put together carving.  A real artist!

I wonder what he'll do with this giant burl on a  porch post.











The gift shop also had the popular diamond Willow walking sticks.  Almost got one but no need, or so a little voice said in my head.

Pauline always finds the hats---and tries them on.

Even scary ones.

More mounted animals.  Think this is a lynx.















A few more miles down the road we said goodbye to the Alaskan highway and turned onto the Cassiar Highway.   This highway has not been paved for that long a period and is not so well traveled as the alternative, the Alaskan Highway. There are very few services on this road, as we soon found out.

In fact, for nearly half of it there were no lines on the road.

With all this traffic they should have lines..  ;-)

The first peopled location we came to was Jade City, a very interesting place.  In case you didn't know it 92% of the world's Jade comes from the Cassiar Mountains.  So here they mine it, and create things with it.  And they had free coffee. 

One of the saws and some of the Jade they cut and form.

For example they went from this Jade Inukcuk

to this one in just a few minutes.  Well, maybe a little longer than that.  I got this one for Pauline to put down my the creek.  (Wish; wish!)  Then that little voice started talking again.

We did trade some 'gold' for some Jade and continued along on our way again.  The views on this highway are just out of this world.  But right now we kept thinking that our own Cascade Range would really look nice too.  (All the while hoping they would have put out the smoky fires down South that we had heard about.)
 

More of the views.

We finally stopped at Water's Edge campground on Dease Lake.  This beautiful little campground had no frills, but the lake was lovely and it was peacefully quiet.  If we were not now in a little more of a 'hurry' we might have stayed a little longer.

Just a little walk down the campground road we enjoyed this view of Dease Lake.  We will continue on our next post later.  Take care.