At Liard hot springs campground as the smoke enveloped us the sun shone orange through the haze and then we discovered that the smoky road we had taken from Watson lake to get here had been closed earlier in the afternoon. The road was still closed the next morning when we left, and still closed four days later when I typed this - It would seem we got through just in time. There are currently in excess of 500 wildfires in British Columbia with a total of 6000 h...

From our fresh air spot in Big creek campground we continued East. First stop Watson Lake - memories of trying to get our propane problem fixed over a month ago. Back in 1942 a homesick US army engineer working on the construction of the Alaska highway put up a sign with the distance to his hometown. That was the beginning of the Watson Lake sign post forest On July 2oth 1990 the 10,000th sign was posted - goodness knows what the count is now. We stopped and lo...

We didn't want to leave Skagway but we have a long way to go before summer is over. We climbed up to white pass once more except the road takes a different route to the train then they meet briefly before splitting again. The Canadian border guard was a lot more welcoming than the previous one. A grey blanket had descended but the scenery was still impressive, we certainly hit it lucky to have such great weather on the train yesterday. We had been told that nor...

The White Pass & Yukon Route Railway - we didn't think we could get tickets but we did. What a day for it, a clear blue sky and plenty of sunshine. It is hard to believe that the 110 miles of track from Skagway to Whitehorse were laid in just 26 months. Our train ride would only take us as far as White pass summit and back but that was more than enough to satisfy us. The scenery got better and better as we climbed out of the tree line. I looked across to a ...

Many, many western genre films have been made, some filmed in Alaska pretending to be somewhere else but very few have ever been in set in Alaska. I was very surprised to hear that Donna had never heard of Skagway in Alaska. Ever since I first watched James Stewart in the western film 'The Far Country' the name of Skagway has been etched on my brain as some mythical place linked with a 'Gold Rush'. Never did I expect to be there. The summer of 1896, Skookum Jim...