Whitehorse, Yukon Territory

It's June 9th, and we're on the road to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.




Lance Armstrong?






There are only three RV parks in Whitehorse, and it's a very busy place (after miles and miles of nothing in all directions), so it turned out that the first two parks we stopped at were full. We ended up staying at the Pioneer RV Park, which is basically a large gravel parking lot, and we were packed in tight.


On the other hand, Pioneer offered some great bonuses, like a dog wash,


a small colony of Arctic Ground Squirrels,


and lots of wildflowers, including the tall phase of the Pasque Flower and Bluebells.




Unfortunately, Pioneer also has open trash cans in the park. We haven't seen this anywhere else in "bear country" and hope we don't see it again. Each night we were at Pioneer, we saw this Red Fox jump up on the rim, dive into the trash, and emerge with something wretched to eat.






While this might look like an RV park, it is actually the Walmart parking lot in Whitehorse.


Unless a town passes an ordinance against businesses allowing RVs to park overnight in their parking lots, the local Walmart will allow it. RV etiquette says that RV'ers taking advantage of this policy should not extend their slide-outs or put out chairs. They should basically just park and sleep for the night, patronize the Walmart, and move on in the morning. But these RV'ers were actually camping there. Slides out, chairs out . . . some even had mats, tables, potted plants, and grills out . . . and one group had their chairs in a circle like they were talking around a camp fire. We're hoping they all had permission for this, as it took up a third (a third!) of Walmart's parking lot - and the store was busy! The Whitehorse Walmart could very well limit RV use of its parking lot in the future, maybe soon, if this sort of thing continues. And that would be very sad for RV'ers coming to Whitehorse, as there really isn't enough RV park space for all of them.

Seaplanes on Schwatke Lake, near Miles Canyon:






Miles Canyon (with beautiful blue-green water!), where many prospectors lost their supplies or their lives on their way to the Klondike:




Wildflowers along the trails above Miles Canyon

Wild Rose:


White Locoweed:


Northern Fairy Candelabra, with 1/8" flowers:


Probably Long Stalk Starwort:


Bunchberry:




Bluebells:


Yellow-spotted Saxifrage: