We didn't stop at Moose Creek near Stewart Crossing but I needed to pick somewhere on our next drive to record ramblings of things we have observed in our first 6 weeks in Canada (and a day in Alaska). We have clocked up 3500 miles which is almost 4 times the length of Britain and we haven't even made a dent in North America. They don't just have alternative words here (sidewalk, fender, etc) but they also do things differently here as well. We see cars in the Yukon with electrical wires and plugs hanging out the front - they are not electrical cars but gas (petrol). The truth is it gets so cold here in the winter (sometimes -50 Deg C) that they have to plug their cars in overnight to heat them and prevent the engines from Freezing. Ice cold windshields with hot air blowing on them crack with the extremes in temperature and we have seen people driving with cracks that go across the full width of the screen and back and maybe up & down a bit as well and they are allowed to drive like that. Going on holiday camping - this doesn't normally mean living in tent for a weekend or more but putting up with the luxuries of an RV (recreational vehicle - camper vans, caravans but they don't use that term). Many of these park alongside us and hide our Tilly from sight. Pick up and trailer combinations can be 65 feet in length, and have showers, loos, Plasma TV's, sofas and more - that's not camping! At RV parks people expect connections for water, electricity, sewer and cable TV! Distances between towns are getting longer, you have to keep a careful eye on your fuel level. Today we drove from Whitehorse to Dawson City and that took us 7 hours, all we passed was a couple of gas stations come grocery store and Moose Creek Lodge. What it's like driving in winter heaven knows. Outside towns many highways have signs informing us that you must have winter tyres on by law from October to March. We have never been train spotters collecting train numbers but we have turned into front license plate spotters. Why - well in parts of Canada and the USA you don't have to have a front license plate and if you want you can have something of your choosing (totally different to your official plate on the back). The photo album linked to this blog is the start of our front license plate collection. Great ones we have seen but didn't get to photograph include 'Vietnam War Veteran' and 'Spending the kids Inheritance'. Vehicle inspections - you don't have to have an annual MOT inspection and certificate like in Britain, you don't have to have an inspection at all. In Britain you can't drive around with gaping rusty holes in your bodywork or tyres that stick out beyond the car width but tell them that they can't or shouldn't do it here and the will just laugh at you. Rusted out pickups that look like the wheel arches are going to fall off, jacked up suspension with extra wide tyres more akin to dragsters (except they have tread! Vehicles with bike racks - on the front not the back! Pickups with canoes in the back with nearly as much canoe overhanging as in the pickup, it seems that anything goes over here. Lots of road repairs going on but they don't have temporary traffic lights very often. It's mainly someone holding a 'stop' or 'slow' sign. Strange how the people holding the signs are normally pretty ladies - is that because that's all they think women are capable of in road construction or is it because most drivers are male and are more likely to drive slowly through construction zones if the slow sign is being held by an attractive female? Roads are so long that just getting the equipment to the bits that need resurfacing is a time and expensive job. They seem to patch and patch before eventually they repair the road properly. The patches and holes awaiting patches are marked at the side of the road with wooden stakes with pink ribbons on. The North Klondike highway (todays road) has more ribbons than we have ever seen and sections of the road are in a shocking state. A sunny sky turned moody ahead, a storm was on it's way. It started to pee down and then the windshield wiper on the driver's side started clonking - there was something wrong. It looked like the wiper was going to come off, I changed it to wipe intermittently but struggled to see the road. Nowhere to pull over and I didn't want to stop on the highway. We hadn't seen much traffic all day but sods law someone would appear from behind us in poor visibility with us blocking the highway - so we didn't. A pull in, at last. The retaining clip had come off the wiper, we could have lost the whole thing completely. Gaffa / duct tape did the trick. We were back in business again - then the sun came out once more. Enough ramblings for one day!