Tombstone Sizzle Reel

I took a little extra effort today to make it to Tombstone Provincial Park, one of the Yukon's premiere destinations.  It was worth the stretch.  Even with the smoke and fires, it still looks good.

As always, if the photo looks dumb in your browser, just click on it. 

An unbelievable place.  Stay tuned for more.  

Klondike Highway Post-Plague

There are many beautiful vistas along the Klondike Highway -- I think.  I can't be 100% sure because halfway up, the forest fires began in earnest, and visibility (and breathing) got pretty limited. 

It started not so bad. 

Tricky road but still clear skies. halfway up the Klondike Highway. 

Decent road but maybe a few plumes.

Definitely getting a little hazy. 

Uh oh. 

This was how the latter half of my journey to Dawson City looked.  Visibility was not excellent, which was a shame because the scenery otherwise may have been really something.  But it also created a very ... odd vibe as I arrived in Dawson City. 

There's something unsettling about arriving in an already-surreal town that's enveloped in a thick fog of smoke when it's damned-near snowing ash.  Welcome to Dawson City!

The Klondike Highway, Before the Apocalypse Set In

After Whitehorse, I turned right for the first time in a loooooong time, and headed North to Dawson City.  The road was a little rougher around the edges, but it got me there.  The first half of the ride provided some pristine scenery. 

That speck towards the top of the last photo is a bald eagle!  He hovered around for a good while, then flew over to me so I could get a good look at his white head.  What a creature. 

I also spent some time with a handsome fox, who popped out on the road to greet me at one point.  He was far too clever to be photographed, unfortunately.  

My Favorite Guy in Whitehorse

I came in to a hotel lobby with a question, and this man was behind the desk.  

He didn't respond to my question in any way.  He sat perfectly still for 15 seconds, then handed me a phone book.  

I found what I was looking for, then came back.  This time, he opened up a bit and shared some helpful knowledge about nearby towns and routes.  

We ended up chatting for 45 minutes.  Turns out he's ridden motorcycles all his life -- through India, SE Asia, the Philippines, all over.  He's somehow managed to survive 15 crashes.  

I came back the next day just to spend another session chatting with him.  A truly amazing guy.   

Whitehorse's Best Restaurant

It looks like this:

It's called Klondike Rib & Salmon, and it specializes in ribs and salmon.  I had the ribs & salmon.  They were delicious. 

There are always long lines in front, but this time the tourists are right -- it's well worth it.

Plus, as you wait, you can linger near this sign.  It exists all over the world, but I could really imagine a laconic Yukoner actually saying this to someone.

Yukon Sign Forest

Everybody who visits the Yukon takes a photo of the sign forest.  Here's mine:

It's a graveyard for stolen and abandoned signs.  My thoughts:

1.  It's awesome!  I was unenthused before wandering through it, but after spending a little time there, I thought it was really cool and a lot of fun. 

2.  It's huge!  It's a maze of signs that extends for a city block. 

3.  It has an abandoned bulldozer in it.  Why not? 

Fun With Yukon Numbers

I'm in Whitehorse.  Whitehorse has a population of about 30,000 people.  Whitehorse is the biggest -- and indeed the only -- "city" in the Yukon.

Not a bad-sized city, but not huge.  You know how many people live in the Yukon but NOT in the Whitehorse area?  Around 10,000.  Total.

Guess how big the Yukon is, in terms of land mass.  Go ahead, try.  Is it as big as Virginia?  Texas?  Greenland?

It's 1.14 times the size of California.  That's 186,282 square miles of land.

California clocks in at about 164,000 square miles.  It has almost 40 million inhabitants.  How many is that per square mile?  About 240 people per square mile.

The population density of the Yukon is 0.14 people per square mile.  Leave out Whitehorse, and there's basically nobody here.

Fresno, the fifth-largest city in California, has more than 13 times the amount of inhabitants than the entire Yukon.

The entire Yukon wouldn't come close to cracking the top 100 of biggest cities in California.  Number 100 in California is Napa, with almost 76,000 people.  Wyoming, our second-least-dense state, is more than 40 times as densely populated as the Yukon. Even Alaska has seven times the population density of the Yukon. 

In 2012, the census determined that there were roughly 15,000 private dwellings in the Yukon -- full stop.  California has about 14,000,000.

In 2018, there were 3 murders in the Yukon and two attempted murders, according to police statistics.  Literally nobody murdered anybody up here for a three-year span from 2011-2013.  There were 22 incidents of assault against a police officer, and 4 assaults against private citizens, in 2018.  Nobody messes with anybody up here.

It's not a surprise I ran out of gas out here.  It's a surprise I ever got gas again.  

Yukon Landscapes

There is a story and a memory behind each of these shots, but my overall impression today was of seeing a tremendous actor in the dressing room before a big performance.  I think the Yukon is accustomed to being on display in concert with ferocious weather.  Today I got her at 72 and sunny, but she still flashed some star power.

That's not to diminish what I saw.  It's just to say I know it wasn't the full stage production.

This whole trip has been trees on trees on trees, but I can't begin to explain how the treeline extends to infinity in the Yukon.  Just look at the photo above, size up one of the trees in the foreground, and try to fathom what's happening midway up those mountains.  It's stunning.

Not pictured in this gallery:  The extraordinary people I've met up here.  To a person, they've been reticent at first, then forthcoming and helpful.  They reward a beat of silence and a little persistence.  They're not going out of their way to impress you, but they're kind, thoughtful, and willing to pull up a chair and spend time with you if you give them a chance.  And the stories they tell, of this land and their experiences on it, are gold.  The Yukoners are something special.

253 KM

In the States, under regular driving conditions, I liked to try to see exactly how far the Rebel could go without running out of gas.  I got a pretty good idea through various experiments, and I thought I had it wired.

The Yukon apparently has a few more hills. 

Here's a blurry picture of where I was when the bike crapped out:

Couldn't be much better.  Nice shoulder, sun's still high in the sky.

From the other direction, looking downhill:

Also pretty decent!  Admittedly, the road does not appear to be heavily trafficked at this particular moment.  But otherwise, we'll take it.  I bit into a delicious homemade peanut butter cookie I had bought just to spend money at my last stop when I had to pee, took off my helmet, and enjoyed the silence and the wind for a moment.  I briefly contemplated how many bears might be nearby.

I had budgeted an easy 300km for each 2.6 gallon (9.2 liter) tank.  On flat ground, I can get nearly 320km per tank, but I had noticed in other hilly sections that the mileage was nowhere close to what I had expected.

In retrospect, on this ride from Watson Lake, I really let it rip for the first 150km, going fast and ascending hills with real vigor.  I was on high alert for bears, but I was also starting a little late in the day and wanted to peel off a few kms and get things going.

Maybe 40km after I started the ride, I passed a gas station.  I kept on trucking, thinking to myself, "I know I'm supposed to fill up every time, but this is just too early."  This was my fatal mistake.  Due to a lot of Closed For The Season signs and some apparent business troubles in other gas/camping locations, that turned out to be the last station I passed.

About 180kms into the journey, I knew what the score was.  I knew I was unlikely to make it to the next gas station (listed as the only other "town" between me and Whitehorse, the provincial capital, on all road signs).

I was confident I'd pass other less prominent fuel stops, but I took preventative measures anyway.  Instead of ripping through turns and hills, I slowed to about 55mph, pulled all the way over to the shoulder, hunkered down behind my windshield, and hoped that I'd get better mileage the rest of the way.

That didn't work.  But the amusing part, in hindsight, was that the bike died only a few hundred meters from the crest of an insanely large hill.  I could have cruised in neutral all the way down to this, less than a kilometer from town:

... at which point I would have needed a ride anyways.  Motorcycles, if you can't interpret that sign, aren't fond of these metal-grated bridges.  You jiggle and sway uncontrollably, holding on for dear life the whole way.  That wouldn't have worked without some throttle.  And there's nowhere to walk across that bridge, particularly if some swaying and zagging motorcyclist might come down the pike while you're walking across.

Anyway, a nice local mom picked me up in her pickup truck.  It was full of kids, so I got the extra joy of riding in the truck bed because I couldn't fit in the cab.

At the gas station, they tried to sell me an enormous $50 jerry can that could hold 6 gallons of gas.  I said that I wanted their most modestly priced receptacle.  The attendant looked at me quizzically for a while, and then walked to the trash can and yanked out a discarded empty gallon jug, formerly filled with water.  He gave it to me for free.

Here we are on our triumphant return across the scary bridge.

Bike refueled, mission accomplished.  I had a distinct impression that I wasn't the first biker to die on that hill, nor would I be the last.

Thanks to yet another good Samaritan for helping me where I couldn't help myself.  

Welcome to the Yukon

Just before I entered the Yukon, after driving a healthy distance without seeing a car in either direction, I happened upon this glorious lake at just the right moment. 

And then, a few moments later, I had arrived.