A Yukon Sunday drive
Yesterday was a gorgeous day to get out, and it looked like pretty much every Yukoner had the same idea. Our reasonably warm, sunny days are about to end, and traffic was quite heavy on the Alaska Highway – by our standards that means that there were occasionally 6 vehicles on a single mile of highway! There have been lots of reports lately of bison and elk on the highway, so that was the justification for the drive, but in reality any wildlife would just be a bonus.
We only went as far as the Kusawa Lake Road, 64 km from Whitehorse. That’s not really far enough to see wild bison, but by that point we had seen 2 distant elk (a bull and cow) and 2 elk beside the road (a cow and yearling calf). I didn’t get any photos of even the close elk because we were too busy laughing at the reactions of our huskies – while Monty was mute and focused as usual, Kayla was in full hunting-wolf mode, shaking and whining and then howling when they started walking away and she couldn’t give chase!
We went a few k down the Kusawa Lake Road, to a point just past Mendenhall Landing, where the Mendenhall River flows into the Takhini. The photo of the fisherman below was shot there.
The photo below, shot a few hundred yards from the one above, shows a backwater off the Mendenhall River.
The migrating Trumpeter swans below were feeding on a quiet spot along the Takhini River.
Whenever I drive past the Laprairie Bison Ranch I always wish that they had a field closer to the highway, or a side-road to the existing field. Once the leaves are off the trees it makes for a lovely scene anyway.
The ponds below are one of my favourite scenes along this stretch of highway. It was in heavy fog when we were westbound earlier, but made a worthwhile stop on the way home.
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