The Yukon Territory

We have made it into the Yukon Territory! We're going to spend two days here at Watson Lake, even though tomorrow's forecast calls for rain. After several days on the road, we need a break from traveling -- laundry needs to be done, the rig need to be thoroughly dusted and vacuumed after those unpaved roads in the Northwest Territory (we are both still sneezing from the dust), and there is email and internet to catch up on after two days without.

Our stop last night was at a fancy looking lodge, hotel, and RV park right on a lake. The main building was made of huge knotty pine logs and looked very outdoorsy, with pontoon planes moored at a floatplane base, and helicopter tours leaving right from the lodge. We expected the RV site would cost a bit more than most and it did, $55 (and you can no longer brush off higher prices as being "Canadian" -- the exchange rate is almost the same) -- but what we did not expect was the utter awfulness of the RV park.

What was wrong:

• We were fortunate that we had no neighbors on either side of us because the sites were narrow and oddly angled and we probably couldn't have both gotten our slides out.
• The site was only 15 amps. For those of you who are not RVers, 30-50 amps is standard for an RV park, and gives you lots of power for normal activities. With 15 amps, we could not run our microwave if anything else was on, including a computer. And the camp would not allow anyone to run generators to supplement the power.
• Instead of a nice view of the lake, the view for all but the tiniest of RVs (the "deluxe" sites on the lake) was of propane tanks, gas tanks, utility vehicles and the generator, which loudly ran all night. This is the map they show you when you check in (click to embiggen):
  

  And this was our view in reality:

  
• They did give us a 20 cent per litre discount on gas purchased there, but since their gas was 30 cents per litre higher than anyone else in the area, that didn't seem like a bargain.
• The generator was not the only thing that was noisy -- the helicopter whooshed in, right outside the RV park, at 5:40 in the morning.

So we got off to an early start this morning, having been up since 5:40 or so, and stopped along the Liard River for breakfast (our second cinnamon bun from yesterday).

Back on the road, we had to one-lane our way past some heavy machinery patching holes, and as we got near the end we looked to our left. There, on the hill above the construction, sat a black bear, munching on some plants and silently watching the human activity below.

While we were waiting for our turn to pass the construction, we were behind this man who found a way to fix that nagging problem of "what to do with the jack so I can find it when I have a flat:"

Always best to keep it close to the spare tire!

We also discovered that not all "people of Walmart" are actually in a Walmart:

Maybe she just likes to live in the moment.

More tomorrow from Watson Lake, Yukon Territory