Welcome to Yukon! (I’m a long way from home)

August 21, 2026

Lucy and I spent one night at the Mile 0 Campground in Dawson Creek then headed north on the Alaska Highway. This entire section of Canada, from some ways before Dawson Creek to the Northern Rockies, seems to be industrial in nature. Semi trucks are far more prevalent than RVs now, although plenty of those are still driving south, and the trucks are hauling trees, gravel, oil, whatever can be mined up here. Gas and timber companies have huge camps, while signs on every dirt road tell you what company is set up in that direction. Chevron, Weyerhauser, a ton of names I’ve never heard of. 

I am currently stopped for the night at Borrow Pit #4, which is in Prophet River First Nation territory, south of Ft Nelson (depicted in none of the photos below). I’m not sure what a borrow pit is (and have no cell signal to find out), but they are recreation sites with a picnic table and pit toilet. Some have camping, some have a lake or river. I didn’t stop at them all. The reason I’m stopped at this one is because it is seemingly a million miles away from anything. No lights, no people, just long-ago burned forests and wildflowers and a long, long road heading to mountains in either direction.

The other reason I am here is the red, italicized print in my book that says, “Watch for moose on the road, especially at dusk.” The other warning for this part of the road is “Watch for bears (grizzly and black) on the side of the road.” So around dusk I got out of the van to watch the sunset and moonrise. I was just thinking about how amazingly peaceful it is here – no people, barely any cars, just nature – and you can probably guess what happened. A massive semi hauling farm equipment and supplies pulled in right next to me, blocking my view of potential moose, smothering the peacefulness with a running engine. 

The trailer that the truck is hauling is around the size of two regular semis, and the guy managed to maneuver it, backwards, into the tiny space next to me. He only had a 2-lane road with steep drop-offs at the berms to accomplish this, and it was damn impressive. The driver and a young boy got out, both with fishing poles, so I will definitely concede that I am the person encroaching on someone else’s territory. 

The sky is a pretty orange and blue, and will be dark soon. No moose. I’m beginning to think that they are made up, maybe they don’t really exist except in wildlife parks where you are far away and can’t tell that it’s actually a horse with huge antlers affixed to its head. 

August 22, 2026

Ok, I finally saw a moose, and it was awesome. And not make believe. It was standing on the side of the road, perfectly still until the car in front of me approached, at which point it bolted into the road in front of him. No moose were hurt. Or people. I also saw a black bear running along the side of the road, and a very dead bison with its legs up in the air. The signs now all warn of wild bison in the road.

I’m still in the northern rockies, north of Ft Nelson, not sure exactly where I am. The scenery is miles and miles of forests and mountains. Beautiful and a bit scary, sharing a 2-lane road, up and down these steep grades, with massive semis. I was a bit terrified of driving in mountains at first, not having much practice in the past 30 years, but now it’s no big deal. 

Just past Toad River I saw a ptarmigan and some sheep. I am not certain what type of sheep, and again, no cell service. I’m not going to go back and correct these when I get internet, so if I remember I’ll look up the sheep later. Big. Brown body white head. Horns that curved back toward its shoulders, but not curling. And I only know I saw a ptarmigan because it was standing quite close to an information sign with its ID. 

August 23, 2026

Lucy and I spent the night at a roadside pull-through and were lucky enough to watch some caribou grazing along the berm, just a few feet from the van. I got out to take photos and was instantly swarmed by tiny gnats. So I had to content myself with photos from inside, which wasn’t bad since it had been raining and my windshield was pretty clean (although now the inside is covered with bloody blots from trying to squish as many as possible before going to bed).

For now I’m going to be posting only iPhone pics in this blog since getting photos from the big cameras, resizing, and uploading is too much for the tiny bits of cell service I’ve found. 

The roads have been fairly good so far, but I know up ahead is days of driving the frost heave sections. A woman I met in Dawson Creek told me that she lost two windows on those roads from semis kicking up chunks of rock. I’m a bit nervous about my shelves and my lack of construction talent. I already have one shelf loose, the smallest one, because it bounced and one of the rivets snapped. At our next stop I’ll dig the drill and box of screws out of the back storage and see if I can repair it before heading out again. 

You may remember from past writing that I lost my big shelf on a test run to New Orleans and had to sleep with it resting on the foot of the bed for the remainder of the trip. Unpleasant. When I got back, I replaced all the brackets with hurricane brackets, and added more supports. I’m hoping these hold, cross fingers. I should probably scramble up to the roof and tug on the solar panels to see how they’re holding up.

I finally saw some bison, part of the Wood Bison herd that free-ranges up here. Monstrously huge. And they all had collars on. 

Lucy and I just pulled into Watson Lake and have cell service so I’m going to wrap this up. I thought we’d stay the night here, fix the van, relax, but the town is a dump. Garbage everywhere. The RV park is a giant gravel lot, each person getting about two parking spots of space. Hard pass. I should have just kept driving when I saw the giant hand-painted “Mar-a-Lago North” sign attached to some hillbilly’s shack. 

can you see my tiny little van in this pic?