The Sign Forest

 

Mile 635 - Watson Lake, Yukon, Canada

Welcome to the Yukon - the land of the midnight Sun.  And boy oh boy, they are not joking.  Sunrise seems to NEVER happen and then the next thing you know it 4am and its light again!!

Traveling from Liard to Watson Lake to stay for an overnight before we start our way North to Whitehorse, where we will be staying for 3 days.  In Watson Lake, one must visit the Signpost Forest, which is the only thing in Watson Lake. Well, there is an Interpretive Center and the Northern Lights Museum.  That’s it.  The Sign Forest takes up 1/2 the town of a whopping 1,500, mostly First Nation people.  Big town so far.  During the construction of the Alaska Highway, a young, homesick soldier put up a sign from his hometown.  Since then, the sign forest has grown to over 75,000 signs!  It’s really rather amazing to see in person.  We had made our sign at home and spent at least 45 minutes looking for a free space to put our sign in.  Kept walking up and down the various isles of thousands of signs from all over the world and finally came upon a small empty space at the very bottom of a post.  The sign directly above the space was from a couple from the very small village that my German grandparents lived in.  My mom grew up here and I spent many a summers visiting.  WOW!  What kind of karma is that??  This little village.

        

NO KEVIN!

From Liard to Watson Lake there is a massive herd of Buffalo that wander out and about.  Roll around in big sand pits along the highway, stand in the middle of the highway and just are around.  We came across 6 at one time just hanging out on the side of the road.  

We traveled for a few hours and stayed in a campground outside of Watson Lake, not anything special to write home about.  Just an overnight.  It did have some excitement though!  The night before we arrived, a juvenile Grizzly decided to eat trash and try and get into an employee outhouse by shaking the door with the employee inside!  Not that would be something.  So when we arrived the “Animal Conflict Officer” was there with his big barrel cage to trap the bear.  Most of these campground owners have Bear Tags and do shoot the bears that come into human contact.  It’s the way its done here.  No relocating.

The old church that remains from the building of the Highway

Bodie unfortunately lost his favorite ball in the forest that evening.  He always brings his ball back but shortly after he went into the woods, he came back with no ball and neither of us was going in to look for it!

 Momma and her 2 cubs on the side of the highway