Winter Flashback
The garage sale on Saturday was a success. We have lots more room in the house and garage, and had a few hundred bucks in my pocket. “Had” because we spent it all on Sunday (and a lot more), on a new bike for Cathy, a bike rack for the Outback, and helmets because of the Whitehorse bike bylaw (some people just can’t mind their own business 😦 ). I replaced both tires and tubes on my bike that hadn’t been ridden in about 5 years, but about 50 feet into the first ride, my derailer snapped. So today I have to decide how to deal with that – repair my old bike or buy a new one. Repairs will be costly and will take quite a while because the bike shop is buried in work. If the derailer snapped because of neglect-corrosion (likely), what else is wrong – would I just be putting good money into a bad project?
Yesterday, we loaded Monty and Kayla into the car and headed down to the White Pass on a bear-hunting expedition. We saw fresh bear scat on the highway along Tutshi Lake, so the bears are out of bed, but there was a lot of traffic (by South Klondike Highway standards) so we saw nothing furry. On Dail Peak there is still too much Indian snow to pick out the Dall sheep and mountain goats (Indian snow – a patchy here and a patchy there 🙂 )
Carcross is still the demarkation line between Spring and Winter – south of the village it got pretty ugly, with lots of snow squalls, and the temperature fell from 4°C to 1° (from 40 to 34° F). The picture to the right was shot at the Bove Island viewpoint on the way north (click to enlarge it). Yes, the lake is still totally frozen.
We went as far south as the new Yukon Suspension Bridge project, to see how it’s coming along. They have a long way to go before the doors can open (there are no doors yet – or walls). We had a good look at the layout from the road. If the rumours are true about admission being around $20, they’ll have a very hard time attracting anyone driving by – the market will be cruise ship passengers who don’t know what they’re getting, and where the price is buried in a package price. I noticed in the Yukon News that they’ve changed their “help wanted” ads to include mileage as well as wages. With accommodations virtually unavailable within 90 miles, that may not help much; finding help at any price may be their biggest problem of all.
The images used in the new blog (2020) are now 990 pixels wide. When originally posted in 2006, they were 300 pixels wide, as seen below.
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