6/8/18 – George Johnston Museum

We hit our first bad construction on the way to Teslin.  When Yukon Province gets serious about bad holes and rough patches, they tear it all out to rebuild the whole road.  Then they water the softened dirt to make a muddy, mucky mess for the tourists.  By the time you get to your destination, your truck and trailer are beyond filthy.  (Apparently they need all the water for the water trucks because the RV parks won't let you use their water to wash your vehicles.)

Although Teslin has a population of fewer than 500, there are a couple of museums right on the highway, starting with the George Johnston Museum.  From the highway you see the back of the museum building, much more impressive than the front. 

George Johnston was an Inland Tlingit man who had quite a history.  He was skillful in snowshoes making, hunting, trapping, boat building.  He bought a mail order camera, and took it everywhere, making a record of daily events in Inland Tlingit life, and developing the film in his home.  The mural below is one of the photographs he took.

George went to Whitehorse and bought a 1928 Chevrolet.  After a 15-minute driving lesson on an airfield, he had the car barged to road-less Teslin. For winter hunting, he painted it white, parked it on the frozen lake, and waited for the wolves.  He used it for a taxi service too, repainting it black, for 80 miles of frozen lake and 3 miles of summer road.  

I love the beadwork on these exhibits.

Embroidered wall pockets

Beaded Octopus bag and gloves

There are some exhibits that show how a trapper lived, with realistic animals in the dioramas.

More hunter/trapper stuff hanging from the ceiling.  I thought this was a sled—George told me it’s a fish trap.  And the thing behind it is a bear skin in a stretcher. Took some pretty strong string to stretch a bear skin after it was tanned because no one wants a curly rug!

A Teslin woman tanned the hides from 100 trapped lynx, sewed them to a Hudsons Bay blanket, added a scalloped caribou border dyed with mossberry juice for a rare and warm 400 lynx-paw blanket! I have no idea how old it is, but it’s pretty impressive and I'll bet really warm!  I’d forgotten lynx grew a white winter coat.

Across the parking lot is another small building.  It has displays from the 1942 Aeradio Navigation Range Station that guided planes from 1941 to the late 1960s.  Check out the old radios.

 

Same pictures, plus a few more here:  George Johnston Museum  

6/5/18 – Alaska Highway Mile 0 and Heading North

We crossed the border into Canada at Eastport, ID, on May 24th.  One week and 1,500 miles later we arrived at Dawson Creek, BC, the START of the Alaska Highway.  

                 

This is a big generic “Watch for Wildlife” sign, all lit up so you’ll pay attention.  This one is in both English and French.  Most of the rest are simply road signs with a picture of the animal you’re supposed to watch out for.  We saw more signs than critters for days. 

Speaking of signs, when you see this one, you should slow way down in case there are frost heaves.  So far the road hasn’t been awful.  There’s been a little road maintenance, and some patches, but rarely has it been as bad as we were warned it would be.

This is a sign we had a little trouble figuring out.  I'm assuming it's "Slippery When Freezing".

Much of the road through BC had a lot of straight stretches--sometimes with dips and hills.

We drove by rivers and lakes and mountains.  The road is straight...except when it's not.

We stayed a couple of nights at Toad River Lodge, with a campsite right on Reflection Lake.  When we got there, neighbors on both sides told us we had the best site in the campground.  The day before there were moose right out the back window, including a wobbly-kneed baby.  We saw moose, but they were all across the river, and never saw the baby.  There’s a beaver dam and lodge around the corner from our site—we saw one beaver swimming.  We watched a pair of trumpeter swans float all over the place.  

My favorite day was between Toad River and Watson Lake, driving through Muncho Lake Provincial Park.  We’d had rain the day before and the skies were gray at first.  We stopped at a pullout by an alluvial fan, where the sand, gravel and boulders fans out as it gets washed down from the mountains above.  

Across the road was Centennial Falls.  I’ve never seen a waterfall with as many levels as this one had!

We saw more animals that day than total since we’d been in Canada!  First there was a caribou, then a moose I didn't get a picture of.  Then we saw a caribou cow with a couple of mostly grown calves, just sauntering down the road.  This one’s all legs.

Then suddenly we saw Stone sheep crossing the road.  Apparently the three rams lead the way.  All those horns are impressive.

The rest of the little herd followed, then hung around for awhile.

We have no idea what they’re licking off the road, but most of them at least gave it a taste.

Continuing on, it's beautiful country.

We saw a group of wood bison along the side of the road, including quite a few calves.

In 1942 a lonesome soldier working on the highway put up a sign with the distance to his home in Ohio from Watson Lake. Since then people from all over the world have brought signs to add to the Sign Post Forest.  Last count (2016) was over 83,000!  George brought one with our names on it to add to the poles.

(We also visited the Northern Lights Centre in Watson Lake.  It’s a planetarium where we saw a couple of videos, one about solar storms and the other about the Northern Lights).  Sorry--I have no pictures because it's really hard to take them in the dark.)

Just outside Watson Lake is a little church called Our Lady of the Yukon Church.  It seems to be abandoned now, but I liked the way it looked with the sun shining on the metal roof.  

More pictures here:  Alaska Hwy - Mile 0 to Watson Lake

5/29/18 - Bears in the Campground

We arrived at Grande Cache Municipal Campground in Grande Cache, BC, about 12:30.  There was a note on the door that read “Back at 1:00”.  I went inside the 5^th wheel to fix lunch, and George went for a walk to check out campsites.

When the sandwiches were ready, I went outside to find George. I watched a big black dog walking around by a motorhome nearby.  As it kept moving, I realized it wasn’t a dog, it was a mama bear with a cub following behind!

I grabbed my camera out of the truck and ran back inside the RV.  They wandered around the yard right outside the office for awhile.  The cub did documentary baby bear stuff and climbed a tree. 

They looked in the window of the office.  Maybe she saw her reflection in the glass?  Maybe she wanted a campsite?

She stopped to check out the blossoms on the tree--not sure if she was eating them or smelling them.  The cub's back in the tree again, rather proud of his vertical accomplishments.

And then they decided to continue their stroll.

When the manager arrived and we checked in, she was very surprised about the bears, and said she was going to call Forest Service right away.  Later I took my camera over and showed her the pictures.  She asked me to e-mail them, and later forwarded them to someone at the city office.  She in turn e-mailed me asked me permission to post them on the municipal website. I checked back a couple of times, but doesn't look like it happened--they're not very good pictures, taken through dark dirty window. 

I’ve decided that my career as a wildlife photographer will never get off the ground.  Honestly, when I went out to the truck to get my camera, I was rather nervous.  I don’t think that’s a very good attribute for a budding wildlife photographer, although really long camera lenses would help a lot.

Here's the link to Flickr and all the pictures:  Bears in the Campground