There was a bit of excitement here last night. As I was finishing off my blog on the deck outside, I noticed that what I'd thought was a thunderhead cloud that had been building had actually dropped to street level. I'd been sneezing quite a lot, and was suddenly aware that the air had a distinctly "burny" smell about it. That and the small amounts of ash that started landing on my t-shirt began to get me worried. You couldn't see either end of the street for what was, obviously now, smoke and not thunderhead. Boyd Campbell at the Village Bakery yesterday had told us that the air here is very dry because all the moisture from the Pacific Ocean is lost as snow on the other side of the mountains (falling on what is the largest non-Polar icefield in the world), with the result that the whole of the Yukon, with all that forest, is like a big tinderbox.
"Forest Fire" was the only thing going around in my head. I walked to both ends of the street to see if I could see advancing flames, or herds of animals galloping away from impending doom, but basically everyone seemed to be going about their business as normal. The Haines Junction emergency services building (fire and ambulance) is three buildings down from ours, and there was no flurry of activity there whatsoever. I tried the news channels and found nothing, then looked on the internet and found the Yukon Wildland Fire Management Facebook page. There was a message there from about half an hour previously saying something along the lines of, "there's a tiny fire about 35 km from Haines Junction, that's what all the smoke is, it's not threatening anything, so stop worrying".
It was a something of a relief, but more so when the smoke had lifted by about midnight.
This morning there was no smoke in the air but you could still smell it, and have been able to all day. Checking out the Yukon Wildland Fire Management pages, they're looking after fires all over the territory, and the very east seems quite badly hit. I hope they get some rain soon... but not until after we're gone.
After breakfast we headed out on the Alaska Highway towards Whitehorse, the road we will be taking tomorrow as we complete our time out here. The intention was to visit Aishihik Lake and Otter Falls, both on a road leading north from the Alaska Highway, but we weren't sure if it was going to be possible because that's the area in which the forest fire was burning last night. The assumption was that, if there were going to be any problems, there would be barriers and flashing lights across the relevant roads.
As we came over the hill just outside Haines Junction we had our first view of Paint Mountain which overlooks Pine Lake, our second planned destination of the day. You could see the smoke from the previous night's fire hanging over the mountain, and stretching out to the east over the route we were due to take. I pulled my face a bit, but there had been no further updates this morning, so we plugged on.
The first thing we came to was an old wooden bridge over the Aishihik River at Canyon Creek. It turns out this bridge - which was in the process of being restored (though not at that actual moment) - was built by none other than Sam McGee, once resident of Dawson City and whose cabin we had seen a couple of weeks ago in Whitehorse at the MacBride Museum. He certainly got about a bit.
We drove on from there, looking for the Otter Falls road which seemed, on the map, to be quite close to the Canyon Creek bridge. We drove past it and I dismissed it because, well, surely that wasn't a proper road? A few miles further on I realised it must have been, so we about-faced and came back, turning onto another of the gravel roads we've seen so many of in this territory. Poor Arthur readied himself for another bumpy ride.
Because of the forest fire last night, I was expecting at any moment to find the road blocked, but it wasn't. In fact at one point we came upon roadworks (these being seemingly a man in a vehicle custom-made to shift the gravel around a bit), and several huge trucks came past us, carrying more gravel for the other vehicle to smear around. The speed limit along the road was 70 km/h, but you'd have to be some sort of crazy person to attempt that sort of speed: I was keeping it around 40-50, and slowing down to 20 in places. Otter Falls was about 30 km up this road, and Aishihik Lake about another 50 km after that. I told Sandra there was no chance we were going to go to the lake on a road of such dubious quality, and she agreed. It was quite weird, there were signs advertising it as a place of recreation, as if it was somewhere you'd pop off to on a sunny Saturday afternoon... no wonder they all drive Dodge Rams.
Eventually we came to the falls themselves. There was a little pull-out with information boards, but as expected there was no one else there. The falls used to feature on the back of the old Canadian five dollar bill. There seems to be no real reason for this other than that officials at the Bank of Canada reviewed thousands of photographs from all over Canada, and they liked the one of Otter Falls. They're certainly very picturesque, but not as stunning as they used to be as, apparently, hydroelectric works further up the river have nicked a load of the water, which is a shame. But then, we all still want electricity.
After a while we turned around and headed back down the gravelly road, and when we got to the main road turned right and made for Pine Lake. It's down a road signposted for Pine Lake Campground, which at first makes you think you might be taking the wrong route, but you're not. There was no one else there when we got there, just a beach, a fantastic view of the lake and Paint Mountain behind it, and some picnic tables. We sat down at one of the tables with our sandwiches, and another couple of vehicles showed up, vomiting children, women, and a man wearing a cowboy hat, dark shirt, and jeans in the searing sunshine. He must have been baking. The children ran out to the lake and splashed about it in while we ate; I couldn't bring myself to be grumpy about them.
After eating, we followed a little trail around the bottom end of lake for a while: it wasn't very long and we were soon back on the beach, where we found the other vehicles had gone again. It was mid-afternoon by now, so we came back to Haines Junction, both feeling listless and a bit depressed. There was a local market on, which we went to and wandered around in ten minutes flat. It wasn't very big, but it was enthusiastic and there was a woman there producing lots of homemade Thai food for people to take away. We went down to the Village Bakery and had a couple of ice-creams, and sat in the sunshine. To my utter delight there were a couple of blokes on a nearby table talking complete nonsense to each other, just like Bob and Doug McKenzie:
"So this re-cycling thing, I just take my re-cycling out once a week, and then, like, it's gone."
"Really? Can you put like, batteries in it? And paint cans?"
"I don't know, I should try it, eh? Oh, hello Mr. Horsefly."
"Have you noticed that there's not so many bees around?"
"No."
"Yah, no bees. Plenty of horseflies though. And wasps."
Sandra kept asking me what I was laughing at, I couldn't say anything until they'd gone. I've not heard anyone call anyone else a "hoser" yet, but I've heard more Canadian "eh?"s up here than I heard in Alberta and BC put together.
We got back to the Suite and Mrs. Watson had left us a bottle of wine as a leaving present, which was a really touching gesture. People here are just so friendly. Even our waitress at the Northern Lights Restaurant wrote, "Safe travels home!" on our bill tonight. It's going to be a real wrench to leave.
Tomorrow we head back to Whitehorse and then Vancouver. Let's complete this loop.
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