Our thinking: animals are more often ‘on the move’ early in the morning so we broke camp and were on the road by 6 a.m. In the first hour we saw 2 black bears & 1 grizzly. The next four hours—nothing. More thinking: we are traveling north. This portion of the Cassiar Highway to the Alaska Highway Junction is where LJ and I saw tons of animals last year—the middle of June. There are ice floes on the banks of many of the rivers. Most of the lakes still have some ice on them. There is just not enough new vegetation for the bears to bother. Glad we saw all the activity yesterday!
We DID see seven caribou on this stretch. Couple here; few more there. No pictures because all we’ve got with us are our phones. We talk about getting another nice camera for zooming...but that’s as far as we’ve gotten.
In the late afternoon we came across a thin, hungry bear. Stopped to watch it for a while. Some folks from Rhode Island (tag) with more money than sense (were pulling a brand new mini-Air Stream...keep reading) stopped behind us. The guy jumped out of his car and started walking toward the bear. Got within three feet, laughing and taking pictures. It got the bear’s attention. The bear started lumbering toward him; he started for his truck. Could have easily been outrun and mauled on the spot. We would’ve been on the bear’s side. Every year we read about tourists who don’t seem to comprehend that these are WILD animals and should be respected since we are in THEIR territory. Am wondering if we will be reading about a particular one from RI before the month is over.
I bought Ruth, the Ranger pickup, before driving to Alaska. She served me well on my Alaskan adventures always sporting a DRM BG license plate. Last year I gave her to the girls—first LJ who then passed her to Hannah (& Nick). What to do with the old license plates? One is on my back porch in NC. The other joined 84,000+ in the Watson Lake Signpost Forest.
Camped at Watson Lake Yukon Territory Campground. We’re all getting antsy and are ready to be home. Greg says we should be able to make it in three or four (more likely) days. Sometimes he lies to keep me going.
From Watson Lake to Whitehorse our animal count: 1 fox, 2 caribou, 2 (live) porcupines, 1 black bear. Stopped for a good burger in Whitehorse. A wasted hour and a half later left with grill fixins for our next campsite. Luckily we had stopped earlier at Johnson’s Crossing for giant cinnamon rolls (LJ, remember?)
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