Whitehorse, Yukon!

The last few days have been awesome. More time spent with great people, watching great scenery and traveling to great places! If you would have told me two months ago that I would be traveling to the yukon with some people that I didn't know previously, I would have been confused. Really confused.

The days off started with a lazy morning a few days ago. While sitting around and not doing too much, another driver letting me know that we had a bear kicking it out in bus yard. A few of us investigated, with a fire extinguisher in hand, just in case(but who are we kidding, bear vs. small fire extinguisher: Winner - Bear, loser - whoever runs slowest out of all of us). It was a cool sight, the little black bear was just wandering around, relaxed and happy with setting up camp in our area. Later that day, M + B were coming over to pick me up for our adventure to Whitehorse, YT in Canada, and its the first time I've been able to end a text messaging conversation with "Oh hey, when you get here, watch out for the bear". Alaska is good adventure!

We took off for the Yukon and took a picture at the Yukon sign, just to be funny tourists. I'm scratching my head and we both look confused because we couldn't figure out if the camera was adequately propped on the van for picture taking. Haha.... turns out it was.

Later that night we had a dinner at Earls. It was a good place. We met up with Marcus and Justin, two highway drivers, and a few more friends that were up from skagway. The 8 of us gathered to celebrate Marcus' brother's birthday. I don't know much about his brother, but he passed away a while back. Since then, Marcus' family celebrates every birthday to celebrate the time they got to spend with him. I think that's awesome.

After dinner, we headed out in our van to the top something that looked like a forest service road(or the equivalent in Canada). From there we had an awesome view of whitehorse, the cliffsides and the sunset. We ran around there for a bit and watched the colors change. Great view, great people to watch it with.

We camped that night in a weird little campground that had almost all walk in spots. We got our tents set up by midnight or so, which is good, because it started getting dark right about then. I enjoyed a bit of sleep, but then woke up when the daylight hit again at about 3:30 am. Whitehorse doesn't have the surrounding mountains that Skagway does to block light and give the slight appearance of night. Jeez.

After a little more sleep, we regathered with Marcus for breakfast, shopping at a grocery store with decent prices and selections, and concluded with a beautiful nap in the park by the river. The sun was out, it was warm and amazing. To top off our visit to "civilization", we even made a trip to starbucks and enjoyed those in the lawn again. It may have been the first day my summer has felt like summer.

"The worst winter of my life was spent working in Alaska last summer" - Anon. Good one!