Day 8

Early day

This was our longest driving day. It’s about 10.5 - 11 hours to get to Whitehorse, Yukon. With stops and gassing up we ended up driving closer to 12 hours. We work up at 5:30am to hit the road by 6am which meant the kids were exhausted and ended up going back to sleep in the car. I may or may not have napped in the front seat.  


Wooden tripods

As we were driving along, I started noticing these wooden tripod structures along the roadside. Sometimes they were on the exact side of the road and other times they were a little further back from the road. They had a variety of colored tags or streamers hanging from them. I’m super curious as to what they mean. I haven’t been able to find any information on them online. (It’s possible I’m just not putting in the correct words to get a result. Like I taught my students this last year - Google is just a search engine! It only spits out within the parameters you give it! Lol) Anyways, my imagination is running wild about them. Maybe they are original surveying posts and have stayed as historical markers of some kind? Maybe they are some type of Canadian Mounty signals. They mark buried treasure. They have something to do with local Native American tribes - marking reservation boundaries? A family who drove up to Alaska several years ago put them up as a family thing and now everyone thinks they are part of the Alcan experience so no one messes with them… No idea what they actually are for although there is probably a much simpler explanation than what I've thought up.

Muncho Lake

We’ve only seen 2 cars in 2 hours. This is the stretch of road that is lonely and not a lot of people. This is also when, regardless of how much gas is in the tan, if you see a gas station, you stop and top off. You never know when you’ll find the next gas station.


We stopped at Muncho Lake to get some gas. Usually I stop at Toad River just before but not this time. As we drove past Toad River though, Mackenzie woke up and exclaimed, “Oh look at this cute little town!” 😂 It is really cute. There are only 4 or 5 buildings next to this gorgeous lake. Last time I drove with my kids, we stopped and threw rocks into the lake. This time we waved.


The local Muncho Lake gas station is so cute! I took a picture of the gas pumps. These little ones look like a gas station from the 1950’s. So cute. The bathrooms were cute too - they always say Ladies and Gents. There was also a really cute area with flowers in old boots for decor. I loved it! 

Bison babies

We saw a pretty good size herd of bison today. 🦬 They were hanging out on either side of the road - so cute! These ones weren’t very big though. I’m hoping we can see a huge wood bison. I saw one years ago on is drive and, truly, it was bigger than my SUV. It was ginormous! These ones were fairly small. The babies are so cute too! There were quite a few babies. 

Sparce wildlife

I was napping in the front seat when I felt the car jerk. I sat upright pretty quickly to see a small grizzly bear meandering across the Highway. Too quick for me to get a picture since we were still going. My dad had to swerve to avoid it. That little grizzly (and he WAS little - we think possibly his first year away from his mama) was not concerned about us at all. He had zero intention of stopping. Bummed I missed a picture but hopefully we’ll see another grizzly. We’ve seen plenty of black bear. Only the one grizzly thought. 🤞🏻we see another one! I’m not sure if we will see many more animals though. The wildlife has been pretty sparse. I’m betting it’s because we’re driving mid-summer and most of the animals have headed away from the roads by now. I’ve always driven the Alcon closer to spring and fall (usually for school). They wildlife is super active around the roads at those times. It’s been super exciting to see the animals we’ve seen though. 

Gravel roads

Most of the Alcan is paved now. Still a few sections of unpaved road though. Not nearly as much as when I was in school and driving back and forth. Still had to take a picture of it for nostalgic sake.

Random picnic bench

n the absolute middle of nowhere is this cute little picnic bench overlooking the row and the scenery on the backside of the hill. I don’t even know how you would get up there without hiking through the woods from the road. I love it!

Sign Post Forest

We made it to Yukon! Yay!


THE SIGN POST FOREST! YES!!! My absolute FAVORITE stop on this drive!! It is the most interesting, bizarre, cute, hilarious, and slightly weird stop. People from around the world have driven through here and nailed license plates, city/street signs, wooden signs, tin plates, paddles, toilet lids, tin plated photographs, a toddler training potty, bread tin with gnomes, stickers - all SORTS of random things showing casing towns, states, countries, cities, families, etc. it grows and grows and grows. I absolutely love how wacky it is! There is an amphitheater in the middle where you can sit and look around. There are a few picnic tables for lunch - it is such a great stop. 


We stopped and ate some lunch. We spent about an hour walking around and looking at all the different signs. Some new license plates that I’ve never seen before: Australia, Panama, Aruba, and all the way down to Kokomo. (But not Jamaica, Bermuda, or Bahama… I had to. I had to. There’s a song tied to everything! 🤣 Thank you Beach Boys! 😁😇) Really though, we saw Aruba and “Kokomo”. Too bad it wasn’t next to a Florida license plate. That would have been hilarious!!!

STEM in real life

We saw 10 black bears and 1 grizzly bear today. So fun! Lots of beautiful scenery. At Teslin River and Teslin Lake they are doing this cool construction project of rebuilding the bridge. It just looked so cool! Like some awesome STEM project come to life.

It was really cool to see how the construction company set up a barrier in the water to protect the lake and river from the debris associated with the project. You can kind of see it from the picture on the bottom right. It's the yellow floating line in the water.

Lost in Whitehorse

We got slightly lost once we got to Whitehorse, trying to find our lodge. It was not exactly easy to find but we figured it out. It’s cute. There’s a common dining/kitchen/sitting area. We have the Aurora suite which has a dining/living/kitchen area, a bathroom, and a bedroom. It also leads out to the deck where they have a grill, seating area, fire pit under teepee poles (their canvas is broken), and a hammock. It’s really peaceful and pretty. It was a loooong day and I’m just so excited to go to sleep! Lol

Side note - Whitehorse is such a cute town!