Day 3 - Whitehorse, YT

The alarm went off this morning at 6:30 am, but we were both already awake, still not quite there in our sleep patterns.  Vancouver was already bright and blue and warm as we ate our final breakfast at The Sylvia Hotel, before checking out and catching a taxi with a friendly and chatty driver back to the airport.

There the check-in process was quickly over, and we were through into the domestic departures lounge, waiting for our flight to Whitehorse.  Nerves started to kick in.  Not just my normal, pre-flight nerves (I must stop watching programmes like Air Crash Investigation), but apprehension about travelling to a place of which we know relatively little, and so far from what most would call civilisation.  I don't know what I'm getting us into.

We boarded an aeroplane that seemed to be full of Canadians who knew each other, and boy do Canadians like to talk.  It was just non-stop yapping as we took off and flew north over the Coast Mountains, heading into the unknown.  A snack was served; sandwiches, ham and cheese or turkey and bacon, which put me in mind of Bruce's dire creations on the train from Prince Rupert to Jasper in 2010.  These, though, were so much better.  After two hours of flying, and a very bumpy descent (through which the Canucks babbled incessantly, even though the flight attendants themselves looked a little nervous), we touched down at the Erik Neilsen Whitehorse airport.  The captain told us the temperature outside was 21°C, with clear skies.

We entered the arrivals area and waited for our suitcases by a luggage carousel in the centre of which two stuffed caribou locked horns.  Suitcases retrieved, we left the airport and were picked up and taken to our next hotel, the High Country Inn, by the complimentary shuttle service.  Having been booked in, we got to our room where we finally unpacked our suitcases, three days into the holiday.

Whitehorse is the capital city of the Yukon, and the largest town in northern Canada.  The town seemed to come into existence simply because it was the bottleneck for all the traffic - rail, foot, and river - pouring into the region for the Gold Rush.  Prior to this it was an area where the territories of various First Nations tribes overlapped.  As with many places in north-west Canada, the Second World War had a big impact on the fledgling Whitehorse (then White Horse) when the US military decided they needed a road to transport troops and provisions between Alaska and the rest of the USA, and so built the Alaska Highway through it.  The town gets its name from the White Horse Rapids on the Yukon River, said rapids no longer in existence thanks to hydro-electric dam works.

After we'd unpacked it was out into the town to explore (for "explore" read "find a liquor store").  It was about 3 pm by now, and blazing hot.  You have to realise that at a latitude of 60° north, the southernmost point of the Yukon is further north than any part of the British Isles except for the Shetland Islands, and Whitehorse is even further north than those.  Yet today the temperature reached 24°C.  The first thing we spotted was the S.S. Klondike (actually the first thing we spotted was one of the very few roundabouts we've ever seen in Canada, which is already causing me palpitations for when we pick up a vehicle in a few days).  We took a few pictures of the ship (and one of the roundabout) just because the weather was good, but we'll be returning to it more fully later in the week.

It seemed quite quiet as we walked along Second Avenue, one of three or four really major roads through the town, but then it is Sunday, and most places are closed (we did find an open liquor store though).  We found the station where we will pick up the train to Skagway on Wednesday, then looped back through the town spotting different eating places and useful landmarks.  At the hotel we'd asked if there were any plans for Canada Day tomorrow, and had been told of a parade that would march through the town, so we found the route that was going to take so we could plan somewhere to stand.

Then we came back to the hotel and had a couple of beers on its famous deck (called The Deck), apparently the most popular meeting place in Whitehorse.  It was weird sitting in the blazing sunshine and realising that not only are we almost eight hundred miles further north than we were this morning, and over three hundred miles further north than we were when visiting Peace River in 2008, but that this is the furthest point north either of us has ever stood (or, at the time, sat) on this planet.  It made me feel giddy and slightly disorientated.  And we have much further north to go yet.

For our main meal tonight we'd decided to visit Antionette's.  This is a restaurant we saw only a week or so ago on the Food Network's You Gotta Eat Here, a show presented by John Catucci who looks at restaurants all over Canada.  It was one of those instances where, knowing so little about Whitehorse, we saw a TV programme about something happening there and latched onto it.  Antionette's serves - wait for it - Caribbean food.  In northern Canada.  And it's fantastic.  We even spotted the lady herself, talking to locals just outside the kitchen.  You really do have to eat there.

Tomorrow, Canada Day.  Not really sure what to expect in terms of celebrations apart from the parade I mentioned earlier, but as we were getting ready to go out tonight I heard a sound I never imagined I would hear in this part of the world.

Someone was practising bagpipes.