Day 11--Yukon Territory and Inn on the Lake

Today started out with a laugh. We ate breakfast at the lodge, loaded the car, and the kids climbed in. Chris and I went inside to turn in our room keys and when we came out we found Dharma in the front seat with her shoes on her hands...smashing all the mosquitoes against the front windshield. I started laughing and she stopped her hunt and promptly showed me the soles of her sandels and exclaimed "Look at how many I've gotten rid of!!!" as I see all the guts on the shoe. Remember...I warned you all in yesterday's blog about the mosquitoes.

Anyway, with the mosquitoe population within the car greatly diminished by our fearless warrior, we set out on today's drive. We entered the Yukon and had to chuckle at a sign that radar detectors are against the law here. We have not seen a single police officer (knock on wood) since entering Canada. The speed limit states 55 mph but the traffic easily goes 70-80...when you even see another car on the road. Today, we decided that we were the only people heading to Alaska becuase we probably past less than a dozen vehicles in our 7 hours of driving. A ccol place we stopped today is Watson Lake's Sign Forest. Back when the Alaska highway was being built someone put up a road crossing sign stating the miles to various world destinations (you know, the kind with arrows pointing a direction and reading "Tokyo 3000 miles". Well, one of the soldiers was homesick so he added his sign to the post pointing out the mileage to his hometown. Now almost 70 years later 55,000+ signs have been added to this "sign forest". Some are very extravagant wood carvings, some are handwritten with marker on a piece of scrap, some point are signs that look like they were stolen right off a sign post in the town it came from, some are factual, some are sentimental ("4000 miles to Jessica. I love you." followed by the guy's name). It was really cool. So remember to plan to add your addition to the sign post forest if you drive the Alaskan Highway. I wish I had known in advance so I could put one up that said 4000 miles to Pentwater (where we started this journey). Yes, we crossed the 4000 mile marker today and have about 750 left to go. Tonight we are staying at the Inn on the Lake outside of Whitehorse in the Yukon. Martha Stewart filmed a segment for her Martha Stewart Living tv special here in 2002. It is a log cabin design but very modern and comfortable inside. We had dinner prepared by the onsite chef of: seafood chowder, spinach salad (which Dharma ate all of), ribs with twice baked potato or beef roumalade with potatoes, and a fancy pudding for dessert. It was wonderful. The only other couple here is from the UK and we all enjoyed a delightful white tablecloth dinner together (fortunately they have grandchildren the age of our kids so they were happy to have them at the table). We are actually staying in the guest cottage on the premises which has three bedrooms, a sitting area, dining area, bathroom, and kitchen. It is quite lovely and everyone settled in nicely. We had hoped to go kayaking on the beautiful big lake but the weather, though, clear is blustery and the lake is a bit too choppy for our tastes. Instead the kids are now in the hot tub and I am going to sign off to join them. We can't believe that we will be in Eagle River (our neighborhood on the edge of Anchorage) on Sunday afternoon. This trip has been amazing for all of us...the 374 miles today and the 4059.6 total we have driven.