You are now entering the Yukon

               After leaving Ed and Leigh, the rain clouds finally parted and I continued on to my first Yukon campsite: Watson Lake. This small city in the Yukon hosts one of the most under-rated tourist icons in Canada: the Sign Post Forest. The forest was started in 1942 by a homesick American soldier, who planted a sign with mileage pointing towards his home. As others followed, the forest has grown to a current total of approximately 65,000 signs. I strolled through and managed to find a few from northwest Calgary, just to make sure. The small museum at the Watson Lake Visitor’s Centre located next to the forest is a great gateway to the Yukon’s flora and fauna. Despite the week of rain I couldn’t help but feel elated and excited; I had finally arrived in my first Canadian territory, the Yukon!

               During July, the side of the highway is littered with families of bison. Standing around 6 feet tall and weighing over 2000lbs, these nonchalant beasts can be considerably intimidating to a lone cyclist – especially when they’re relaxing in the limited shoulder (or even most of the right-hand lane). I’m certainly not going to ask a lumbering bison to please excuse me and make space for me to pass. Eventually I recognised that there was nothing to be done (for my prairie friends who have tried cow tipping, imagine a cow that is twice the size, and with horns [I realise I have a very small audience for this parenthesis]) and I resolved to relax and carry on, around the monolithic bovids. As they hardly acknowledged me, it was ok. The sense of true wilderness was only occasionally broken by the rare passing vehicle, often honking or cheering their support as I pushed on towards Whitehorse.

The Alcan

Mile 0 of the Alcan

I left Grande Prairie traveling west towards British Columbia, where Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway begins in Dawson Creek. There is a museum in DC located in a cute historic building about the construction and use of the road built by our American friends to connect the US with Alaska during WWII. The road is a popular RV route for American tourists making their summer pilgrimage to Alaska.

Leaving Dawson City, I was greeted with the toughest winds I had seen yet. While the terrain was relatively flat, it was extremely difficult pedalling against the crosswind with constant truck/RV traffic on the single lane highway. Eventually, disaster struck – two large trucks traveling in opposite directions passed me and woosh… lost my balance and went off the side of the Alcan into the grassy ditch. Had anyone seen that, I have no doubt it would have made some cycling blooper reel somewhere. How embarrassing. When I managed to pull myself (and my self-esteem) back together, I saw just ahead of me a 60ft RV that had also fallen prey to the terrible wind conditions, losing their hitch. The driver, Ed, offered to get me out of the unfortunate conditions and drive me up to the next stop in Fort St John. The ride with Ed and his lovely wife, Leigh, was made even more enjoyable when the rain started to pour and their RV home became my shelter from the storm that night. What a great sleep I had on a real bed!

Creepy Beaverlodge, AB beaver

One of the most amazing parts of this trip for me was the kindness from strangers. I met so many wonderful people who loved hearing about what I was doing and were eager to be a part of it in some way. Ed and Leigh offering me shelter from what later turned into a thunderstorm was a simple random act of kindness that has turned into a friendship that we have maintained over a year since meeting on the side of a blustery highway in northern BC.