From Whitehorse to Alaska Border

Well, there just isn’t enough time to catch you up to our current location. So, even though we are currently in Wasilla, Alaska this update is only going to cover from Whitehorse in the Yukon through our arrival in Alaska and on to the ‘North Pole'(it’s a real town). The good news is it will be shorter than our last update :)!

Whitehorse is an amazing city! Absolutely overflowing with history, especially in regards to the gold rush. The changes seen in the last one hundred years in this area are dramatic – the entire way of life of the natives changed in less than a single generation. As with all things; some good, some bad and many opinions of how things could have been done differently. We camped near to the city and made many excursions to sites of historical significance, such as the S.S. Klondike. Another significant event that occurred in Whitehorse was that I finally got a haircut, it was the first time the weather was hot enough to allow Sharon to give me one outside without fear of frostbite (slight exaggeration).

Outside of Whitehorse we visited the Yukon Wildlife Preserve. The organization has quite a collection of animals that can be seen up close. My personal favorite was the lynx; besides being very cool, it is an animal we will probably not be able to see in the wild.

From there we headed to the beautiful Kluane National Park. We camped at Kathleen Lake Campground which lies at the foot of an enormous and majestic mountain range. On the days that it was not raining the views were breathtaking (the photos will far exceed my meager descriptions). We did one hike on a very steep trail up into the mountains and another hike on a ‘rock’ glacier (a sea of rocks left over after a glacier melted). When the weather turned nasty we retreated to a small shelter and relaxed and planned upcoming adventures!

Lastly, we crossed the border from Canada into Alaska! The border crossing went smoothly, it only took a little longer because the bored border guard found our motorcycles and our trip more interesting than his job. From there we went to Delta Junction, which is an old agricultural community. We visited a famous roadhouse that served travelers for almost 100 years. The roadhouse system was such that you could travel from one roadhouse to the next in a day by horseback. Interestingly, many of the highways currently used are located on the same trails that were used so long ago!

We hope this update finds you well and thanks for joining us on our journey!

Chris & Sharon

p.s. – I also updated the Routes page if you would like to see our route on Google Maps