Day 13 – Laird Hot Spring to Teslin

As in previous days we see the occasional bear munching on the vegetation near the road shoulder as well as a few Stone Sheep. The sheep are after the roadside minerals such as salt. Unlike bears the sheep ignore any cars and RVs that stop along the road. The wildlife tally adds some Wood Bison as well.

Not far from Laird Hot Springs the road changes from heading north turning to the west. Here’s were we first cross into The Yukon. Heading westward the road meanders a bit north and a bit south crossing the British Columbia / Yukon border several times. It’s not until we are much further to the west that the Alaskan Highway stays firmly in The Yukon all the way to the Alaskan Border.

First stop for today is Watson Lake and the Signpost Forest. During the highway construction a worker feeling homesick placed a post with a sign stating his hometown and how many miles it was away. The next day there were another half dozen signs on the same post. This tradition of placing a sign continues today. There are many tens of thousands of signs. It’s grown to cover a large enough area to get turned around in.

Every so often we pass the remains of forest fires, some from this year and some from years ago. One can observe the growth of small trees, shrubs, or in the case of fires earlier this year only fresh bright green grass. Occasionally we see smoke from active fires but nothing that lasts very long.

In making our way towards the one large place in The Yukon, Whitehorse, where we plan to arrive late morning tomorrow where we can then secure food supplies. That way we don’t need to find a campground near Whitehorse. We stop at a campground in Teslin, a small town along the road. This is the first commercial campground we’ve stayed at on this trip. Previously we’ve stayed at municipal parks, provincial parks, and one National Park. We stayed at this campground on our previous jaunt to Alaska in 2018. We stopped early enough in the day to make it a laundry day, first on this trip.