Whitehorse to Haines Junction
It was absolutely freezing this morning, and I found it very difficult to motivate myself to get out of the hot campsite shower. But I managed, and after a breakfast of bagel, we packed up and set off.
Even though I’ve got loads to get through, let’s go on a tangent and discuss the routine of hooking up and unhooking. There are a few options when it comes to RV sites.
First of all there’s size - obviously your site has to be big enough for your vehicle. Ours is a little over 20 feet long, a “class C”, which really is small fry compared to some of the bus-sized monsters we see. I dread to think how much those people are spending on fuel.
Next there’s “pull through” or “back in”. We can do either. Drivers of larger vehicles prefer to avoid reversing. The rental company forbids us from using reverse gear unless the passenger gets out and gives directions - when you’re driving you can’t see what’s behind you. You’re like one of those lorries with the sign on the back saying “If you can’t see my mirror, I can’t see you.”
Finally, there’s what services you need. The three main services are power, water and drainage. We’ve never had a space with drainage- which means we have to dump our waste tanks regularly. Power is either 30 amp or 15 amp - they only thing we have that requires 30 amps is the air conditioner, which we’ve not needed for days. Apparently some places also offer cable TV. That doesn’t affect us.
So, we’re allocated a space, we drive in, or make a song and dance about reversing in. “No the other left”, and that kind of thing. We’ve not come to any great arguments over this - the only time it got really frustrating was when a stranger stuck his oar in and started giving the opposite instructions to Debbie.
The services will typically be screwed to a post by the site. A hose goes from the tap to the RV, and a cable with a plug on the end comes out of the RV and plugs into the socket on the post. If its 15 amps, an adapter is used. And that’s it. The connection points, hoses and cables are secreted behind little lockable flaps around the outside of the vehicle.
If we’re plugged into power, our fridge runs on electricity. Otherwise it runs on propane gas. If we’re hooked up to water, then the cold taps are fed directly from there. Otherwise they’re fed from our fresh water tank, which requires that the water pump is turned on. Hot water always comes from our hot water tank, which is heated by a propane heater, which we have to remember to turn on when we’re going to need it.
Some campsites have none of this - the government campsites are just a parking space and a fire pit. We haven’t used one yet, but we keep meaning to. They’re usually in very attractive surroundings. We carry enough water to last a couple of nights. Lack of power prevents me from typing a diary (my laptop battery doesn’t last long enough even to boot), but we shouldn’t let that stop us.
Unhooking is just a matter of unplugging the power and stowing the cable, unhooking the water hose and putting it away. It’s a good idea to opportunistically top up the fresh water tank while the hose is out.
When the RV is being a home, we put the foldable bikes on the front seats, out of the way. When it is being a car, we dismantle the dining table, and put the bikes in the space that’s been created. It’s become a routine.
Finally, before leaving a campsite, we have to consider dumping our waste. It’s quick and easy, it reduces our weight, and it makes us more prepared for a potential night without services, so there’s little sense in not doing it. The campsite dump stations are neat round holes in the ground, usually with a fitted cap, but sometimes just covered with a bit of wood and a rock. A wide hose clips onto the outlet on the RV, and fits neatly into the dump’s hole. We have two waste tanks, “black” (toilet) and “grey” (sink and shower). We open the black water valve, let it empty under gravity, pour a bucket of water down the toilet to make sure, then close that valve, and open the grey water valve. The grey water rinses the hose, so there shouldn’t be any nastiness.
So far, it’s never gone a bit Frank Spencer, to my relief.
Tangent over.
We didn’t go far - just as far as the Yukon Transportation Museum, a couple of miles down the road. I missed the turning, which meant we got to go around some roundabouts on the approach to Whitehorse International Airport, finding somewhere to turn around. The museum has some nice exhibits - sleds, railway carriages, caterpillar towers, and so on - but it seems they’d had trouble assembling all this stuff into a coherent whole.
For some reason, Batman made an appearance in their model train set.
Much better was the museum next door, which we entered on the same ticket — the Beringia Interpretative Centre. We all know that during the last ice age, so much water was tied up in glaciers that sea levels were lower, meaning there was a permanent land bridge between Alaska and Russia. What I didn’t realise was that because this area was in a “rain shadow”, it was not itself covered in ice. It was too dry for forests too - so it was a vast grassy plain inhabited by mammoths, giant beavers the size of bears (!), giant sloths even bigger than that, lions, deer, humans and, well, all sorts. The museum showed a good film on the subject, and had lots of spectacular complete fossils.
Also at the centre, was the entertaining opportunity to use an “atl atl”. This is a precursor to the bow and arrow; a tool allowing you to throw a spear or dart more effectively. It’s a stick with a little barb on the opposite end to the handle, which fits into a dimple at the end of the dart. Effectively, your arm becomes longer by the length of the atl atl, and you fling the dart. Mine went a surprisingly long way, and I can see how with practice it would become very effective.
We parked back in downtown Whitehorse for lunch. It was still bitterly cold, and we were glad to get inside the “Klondike Rib and Salmon BBQ”. Our table was in an added-on marquee area, which patio heaters were barely managing to keep warm. Still, Debbie enjoyed fish and chips, and I enjoyed a ciabatta sandwich containing salmon smoked on the premises.
The group of women on the table next to ours were laughing uproariously over an anecdote in which one of them was asked to spell her name twice. The exact same story was repeated at least eight times, triggering the same mirth every time. We longed for the sanity of less populous places.
With it being this cold here (everyone insists it’s not normal for the time of year), Debbie’s worried about Barrow, where we expect to be in a few days’ time. We aimed for Walmart, in search of a cheap sweatshop-made warm layer. We were distracted by the sight of “the real Canadian Superstore”.
It had to be tried. It’s just a huge supermarket, mostly food. We bought some stuff we needed (loo roll, tissues, that kind of thing), and were tempted into buying insulated travel mugs, ground coffee, and whitener, so we can sup coffee like truckers without having to find a Tim Horton’s or a Starbucks. The real Canadian Superstore had more French in evidence than any Canadian shop we’ve visited so far on this holiday.
What the real Canadian Superstore (capitalisation as per its sign) lacked was adult clothing, so we still had to go to Walmart, and Debbie got a reasonably thick hoodie to keep her warm.
We brewed some coffee in the car park, then got back on the Alaska Highway, supping as we went.
I got the impression that there was some great scenery behind the clouds. As we approached Haines Junction, the peaks of the Kluane National Park came into view. We’re not entirely sure whether the white we see on the mountains are snow or ice, but we do know that 40% of this enormous National Park is glacier. There are no roads into the park; it really is wilderness. The best we can do, without making a serious expedition of it, is to gnaw away at the edge.
We hooked up the RV in Haines Junction. The site is a bit of a car park, but the absence of trees (which usually combat the car park ambience) means we have an uninterrupted view of the mountains. This means the view from our back window is pretty special.
We assembled the bikes, because there was a path leading off from the campsite. The bikes are proving rather good. They basically fold in half, which means that folded, they’re, well, about half the size of a bike. The don’t take long to unfold, and to me they seem to be perfectly servicable mountain bikes - lots of gears, shock absorbers on both wheels, nifty.
The path gave us good views of the mountains in one direction. The other half of the loop was just forest. I couldn’t really distinguish it from a forest at home. I’m sure an expert would have something to say about the particular mixture of birch, pine and fir.
It’s sort of ironic. Everyone wants to see a bear - or other wildlife - but you’re encouraged to keep a constant chatter going while in bear country, in order to alert bears to your presence, so they keep away. Of course, this will also scare other wildlife. The best we saw in the woods was some unidentified birds.
Back at the campsite, I’m writing in the laundry, because Debbie is washing clothes, and there’s a WiFi signal here.