Sign Forest

Day 9

 

   Somebody forgot to close all the windows and vents and turned the heater off in the night.  It got more than a little cold in the RV. And guess how our day started?  That’s right, a big fight that included a tug of war over the covers, about who was going to get up and turn the heater on and close all the windows.  How cold was it?  The sky was overcast and it actually spit snow at us a bit.

    Ok, we made a deal.  Irene closed the windows and vents, turned the heater on and came back to bed to warm up.  Jim had to get up and cook a big hot breakfast.  Left over baked potatoes sliced and diced and cooked with onion and special seasoning we brought along.  Bacon,
Eggs and toast with jelly, and a rare cup of coffee.  That’s the ticket.

   Cleaned up the kitchen, did the dishes and took inventory of what we may need if we can find a grocery store today.  List is very short, guess we did a good job back on day one.   We broke camp at about 7:45 and headed north.

     So how did the day progress?  Check it out:

    8:05 Saw 2 Stone sheep on side of road

    8:15 2 more Stone sheep crossing the road

    8:45 Heard of 10 Stone sheep on side of road

   9:30 Stopped at Liard Hot Springs and jumped in.  Wow, how soothing and relaxing.  The actual hot springs are about a 4/10 of a mile hike along raised board walkway to protect sensitive environment.  It is an area with lots of bogs and very small ponds and seems to be a favorite dining room for moose and elk.

   11:00  Left Liard Hot Springs and hit the road

   11:04  Saw 3 Bison grazing on side of road

   11:06 Saw 15 Bison including many babies

   11:09 Saw 22 Bison including many babies

   Noon: Stopped at vista point overlooking The Yukon River and had lunch.  This is a vantage point famous for being the location that robbers used to watch the boats below and pick out their targets. Sitting high on a bluff, we could see the river for a mile or two both up and down river.  Pretty cool.

  1:00 Back on road

  1:59 Saw 5 wild horses on side of road.  Looked like they could take care of themselves

  2:40 Arrived in Watson Lake, our days destination.  We gassed up, found a grocery store and re provisioned.  And then we found the sign forest.  Not any sign forest, but the one you can see on the internet.

     This is an area of someplace between one and two acres in size where the visitors center, the Chamber of Commerce or the City council has placed large 8 X 8 posts by 15 feet tall, in the ground.  The deal is that people driving through will post their own sign.  We saw street signs, city limit signs ( I am sure they are all replicas), homemade signs with family names on them, country signs and on and on. The majority of the signs were license plates from all over

    It was really neat to walk about the “sign forest” and read the signs.  Quite a few were of professional quality carved out of wood, others were simply hand painted.  The most interesting was to read where they were from.  All over the world. Signs from Australia, Germany, Italy, Austria, Chile, Argentina, Georgetown, Coloma, Sacramento, Palm Springs, Pico Rivera.  Signs with family names on them and then annotated with the years they came through, some as many as 5 and 6 times.  .

    We found our fellow travelers Jim and Shirley from North Carolina putting up their sign.  We helped a little because he was putting it up with a screw driver and the wood was almost petrified. 

    Very cool stop and a fun way to spend an hour or two.

   4:00 Jim and Shirley were going to go all the way to Teslin for their nights stop.  We did not want to drive that far and bid them farewell.  We still had quite a bit of energy and headed out to see what the campgrounds at Junction 37, where the Cassier Highway meets Highway 97 would be like.  Campground was not open, snow was falling a bit, and the owners of the hotel offered to allow us to park next to their building with no wifi, no hookups for $25.  Think we can do better.

 4:15 drove to Continental campground about 1 mile away from Junction 37.  It was still closed for winter.

4:18 Drove to Rancheria RV park about 5 miles away. It was closed for the winter.

4:19  Ok, what the heck. We might as well drive to Teslin ourselves.

7:15 arrived in Teslin exhausted and ready for a good night’s sleep.  Jim and Shirley were walking through the parking lot on the way to the café to use the wifi.  It was not yet up and operating for the campgrounds.

    We are parked right next to Jim and Shirley and next to Lake Teslin.  It was completely frozen over.  We had our traveler’s special for dinner, Chili Dogs with Cole slaw.  Yum, quick easy and delicious.

    The café was very generous and allowed us to sit in a corner, plug our computer in and sit at a table to use the internet.  Tried to write blog and send it out, but it takes too much bandwidth.  We have resorted to writing the blog on Word, saving it and will copy and paste when we can send it out.

   Feeling guilty about using the café with the young waitress refilling our water glasses all the time, we discuss if maybe we should buy something to make it worth her while.  We know they have homemade pies but are not in the mood for something like that.  French apple, berry, and a rhubarb pie.  Nope, not gonna do it.  Oh, they have vanilla ice cream.  Nope not going there.  Ok maybe a little piece.  Can you heat the pie and put the ice cream on top?

   Now you know what a day on the road looks like. 364 miles driven.  Tomorrow we will go over 3000 miles for the trip so far..

                                                                     10:00 pm at Teslin