June 27th, 2024

THE DETAILS:

Sunny, warm, dry, breezy

4.5 hours/ 145 miles

dry camping along the shores of Kluane Lake, Yukon

We set out today from Whitehorse intending to find a nice place to dry-camp. It took driving 145 miles and through some gorgeous scenery but when we rounded a bend and saw Kluane Lake we knew we had found the spot. We got our first glimpse of glaciers and a whole chain of icefields that towered over us. 

Though the beauty above us was hard to take our eyes off of, there are these delicate, aromatic purple flowers everywhere along the roadside and they line themselves up along the road as if  it was a runway. (side note: as I was out of the truck taking this picture on the side of the road a car pulled up and said, "just to let you know there's a grizzly with 2 cubs just up the road"! We never did see them)

We pulled into a nice big paved turnout off the road which overlooked the lake and is surrounded by mountains and glaciers and thought, yep, this is perfect. Almost immediately another RV pulled in and a nice trio came over to greet us from Utah. They were very friendly and chatty and we shared our grill with them as we all grilled our own meat and talked about one another's lives, the road to Alaska and our plan for the rest of our journey's. Steve and Anita have been married 30 years and their friend Betty who recently lost her husband are traveling together to make one of Betty and her late husbands dreams come true. We hope to meet them again along the Alaska Highway.

The winds last night howled! It sounded like a freight train. I thought we might find ourselves floating in the Kluane Lake by morning the way it sounded. It caused me to get up a few times during the night and to my delight I saw some pretty interesting sights. I mainly can't get over the midnight sun...

But even as the night wears on, it never truly gets dark. This picture at 2 am still shows the lit sky in the East...

But the most impressive and unexpected was the moonrise directly across the lake from our trailer. It was spectacular. "Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to make the seasons, days, and years. Let these lights in the sky shine down on the earth" And that is what happened." Genesis 1:14-15 ...

Today we also had the pleasure of adding one more sight to the big 5. We saw wild horses by the side of the road. They came up on us so quickly I, unfortunately, didn't get a picture... BUT... we saw our first grizzly and I did get a nice posed picture of this big guy.

Gary's Road Kill Count: 1 raven. extremely rare to see these birds hit due to their intelligence.