Destruction Bay, Yukon Territory, Canada

Leslie Monday, June 30, 2008

We left Haines today headed for Destruction Bay, Yukon Territory, Canada. Crossing into Canada was easy. This is our first time in Yukon Territory. The roads were good although we climbed significantly to a mountain pass which hurts fuel mileage. We had calculated it very closely so that we would not have to purchase diesel in Canada this time. Diesel is pricy enough; in Canada it is really pricy!

We saw a lot of purple wild flowers along the road. I was able to capture a few pictures.

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Along the way we passed through Haines Junction, YK. At each town I think, well I’ve heard of the next place so it will be larger. Nope. Almost never the case. Haines Junction is a road junction. I had read in Milepost, the bible of Alaska travelers, that there is a monument to the various animals at Haines Junction. I thought it would be in the middle of the major intersection as is the case in many towns. Nope. Here’s the monument as I captured it as we turned the corner.

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Haines Junction had a few gas station/motel/café places (that is one and the same) but there wasn’t any visible town.

We ended the day at a delightful old fashioned campground 16 km south of Destruction Bay, Yukon. Cottonwood RV Park and Campground is on the shore of Lake Kluane which may be the largest lake I have ever seen. We had a nice pull through site and the sun continued to shine. In fact, I went out at 11:05 pm to take this picture just to show you how light it is.

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It never really got dark. Twilight continued all night until it started to get lighter again.
Earlier in the evening I had to test the water temperature in the lake. (This is a tradition, I always test the water temperature as if I’m going swimming.)

Yes, it was VERY cold.

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There were a few strange things about this campground. They generate all their electricity by running a propane generator all the time. That meant that we had only 15 amp power (not enough to do much more than charge batteries and run lights). Because our hot water heater won’t work on propane and we couldn’t run the electric side of the hot water heater here, we had no hot water. The campground did supply hot showers and they were very clean. The other strange thing at the campground was that because of a bear problem, they had no dumpsters.

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We had to carry any trash along with us. All in all, it was a delightful campground and we would stay there again.