We’ve seen quite a few bears and moose now, plus assorted other critters, and I want to write down what we’ve learnt before I forget what we’ve been advised to do when we encounter something furry and potentially dangerous.

The rangers at Exit Glacier and Denali all spent a lot of time educating campers about the safest ways to interact with wildlife. Bears tend to want food, toiletries and other highly perfumed stuff and are usually not aggressive towards people, unless you accidentally get between a mother bear and her cub, or you’re near a bear’s kill site. In both cases the best thing to do is get away, fast.  Generally it’s a good idea to keep a distance of a few hundred metres between oneself and a bear – we’ve only seen them from the safety of our car or a bus, thankfully. We have bear spray that we take when we go walking, and keep at the door of our tent in case one decides to pay us a nocturnal visit. We keep all our food, toiletries and rubbish in the car overnight when we camp, or in the food lockers provided at some campgrounds. When walking, it’s best to make some noise so that any nearby bears know you’re around and don’t get a surprise if you get to close to them. A few people in Denali had ‘bear bells’ attached to their packs – very annoying and ineffective anyway. At best the bears ignore the bells, and in some places they have learnt to regard them as dinner bells.

So – making noise, standing up tall and looking big, talking in a loud voice are all good tactics to use if a bear is looking interested in you. If one decides to get too close, either lie down and ‘play dead’, or use bear spray if you’re carrying it and the bear is within 10 metres.

Ranger Kara at Wonder Lake told us a funny story about a woman who ‘played dead’ when a bear was about 100 metres away from her. The bear wandered up her, lay down beside her and fell asleep!

Moose seem to be more scary to me. They can charge without any provocation, on those skinny spindly legs with that huge body on top. The general advice is to keep a distance of at least 25 metres, and if one does charge or even just notices you, hide behind a tree or other large solid object, or run away in a zig-zag kind of pattern. Moose can’t change direction quickly.

No other big, scary, furry creatures to worry about …. so far. We just get excited when we see any wildlife – eagles, falcons, ptarmigans, elk, caribou, fox, gopher, bears, moose and even squirrels. A woman on the Inside Passage ferry trip told me that her first meal at her in-laws place in Arkansas was Squirrel & Dumplings, so now I look at squirrels a bit differently than I used to. I think it must have been a different type of squirrel though. The ones we have seen look tiny!

Dinner sitting in a tree, unfortunately out of reach.

But here’s a delightful song by my favourite astronaut who also happens to be one of my favourite Canadians

The view of the Caribou herd lands from the Top of the World Highway, on the Canadian border

The mighty Yukon river which we camped next to in Dawson City

Waiting for the Ferry to cross the very fast flowing Yukon River at Dawson City

Looking down at Dawson City and the Yukon River

Five Finger rapids on the Yukon River

Greg sadly looks at the Dempster Highway turnoff, only 741 km to Inuvik past the Arctic Circle, if only he had brought the landcruiser!

Camped at Twin Lakes yukon park. A nice park, but after two days of warm weather it rained all night again.

Chicken has a summer population of around 50, and a winter population of 10. Even 10 people seems like a lot, when they only have vault toilets, no telephones and the roads are closed between October and May.

We drove on the Top of the World highway between Chicken and Dawson City, and it really felt as if we were. The road went along the top of a mountain ridge for a lot of the time, with amazing views over both sides to the north and south.

We camped at the Yukon River State Campground, which is across the river from Dawson City. The only access to the other side is by ferry. Lovely campground with 50+ sites for tents, caravans and RVs. We found a nice site almost right on the bank of the mighty Yukon River, and after we’d got all set up, we realised that there was s site across the track that WAS on the river bank. The sheer, high rock face on the other side of the river is home to peregrine falcons who nest there and raise their young, but I couldn’t find any.

Dawson City sounds like something out of the wild west, doesn’t it? And it is! Dirt streets, lots of old-fashioned timber buildings with names like ‘Gerties’ and ‘Kates’ that might have been bordellos in a previous life, and are now restaurants and hotels. Plenty to entertain tourists. We’re heading to Whitehorse today.

Downtown Chicken Alaska

The Chickens in Chicken Alaska

Greg’s favourite food, Apple Pie, a speciality in Chicken Alaska

The scenery is amazing! For a while, it was a lot like Norway: huge snowy peaks, blue lakes, tree-covered slopes. A picture postcard around every bend in the road.

Oh, but I’ve just remembered something that we saw just out of Carcross, where we found the sourdough bakery. Just on the side of the highway is a sand dune. We both looked at it, thought ‘what the …?’, and did a U-turn to go back and make sure we weren’t imagining it. No – it really was a sand dune that was imaginatively called Carcross Desert, even though there were heaps trees and a lake just down the road a bit. Apparently when glaciers form, they cover a layer of sand and silt, and then when the glacier recedes, the sand & silt comes to the surface and forms dunes in very unlikely places. Like the middle of The Yukon in western Canada. There were a couple of interesting plants there too – Baikal sedge-grass and Siberian lupins, from just across the Bering Strait.

We stopped at Tok, which is an important junction in Alaska – south to Anchorage, north-west to Fairbanks, north-east to Chicken. Fuel there was the same price as in LA. Then we headed south along the highway and camped about 20kms south of Tok at a state forest campground.

Camped 20 km south west of Tok in the Eagle Creek campground

Carcross Desert with Snow covered mountains in the background

On the road north-east of Anchorage. There are snow capped mountains everywhere

It rained most of the morning while we checked out of the hotel in Skagway to head north across the US/Canadian border into the Yukon. I wanted to visit Jewell Gardens, an organic garden on the outskirts of town, & they had a café so we decided to have an early lunch there. As we drove through the town, I noticed that most houses had a huge patch of rhubarb growing in their yard, and there were even a few patches growing wild along the edge of the footpath! Then when I went through the 4 acres of flower and vegetable gardens at Jewell Gardens, there was rhubarb everywhere! It was used as a border plant around garden beds, and had self-seeded around the place, and there were 5 or 6 long rows in the veggie garden area. The whole 4 acres was incredible – a Lilac Walk, with lilac trees in a variety of colours growing on each side of a footpath, a peony garden with loads of buds just about to burst into flower. I’m sure if I stood there just a bit longer, they would have started flowering. It will look stunning in a week or so. And so many flowers that I have just given up trying to grow at home, but at least now I understand why my attempts to grow them have not been successful. They probably need 4 months under a thick layer of snow, which is never, ever going to happen at home. I was amused to see some tiny little nasturtium seedlings being coaxed to grow in display wheelbarrows …. those things grow like weeds at home without any encouragement at all.

It rained the whole time I wandered around the garden. Greg stayed in the car ‘cos it cost $12 to walk through, which I thought was well worth it, but he probably would have been happier to pay money NOT to have to walk around in the rain. Before we went to eat at the café I asked to see the menu to make sure there was rhubarb-something on it, and there were 2 rhubarb desserts – ice cream with rhubarb sauce, and a slice with a rhubarb crumble topping. So we had one of each, to brace ourselves for the drive across the mountains through White Pass to Whitehorse. Gold seekers and First Nation people before them all used a similar route to get further north. It would have been really, really hard on foot or horseback, and I read or heard somewhere that the Canadian government at the time made everyone take 2 tons – ie, a year’s worth – of supplies with them. A narrow gauge railway was built and completed to Whitehorse in 1900, by which time the Yukon goldrush was pretty much all over, and the ‘next big thing’ was Nome, in the very far west of Alaska. If Sarah Palin lived in Nome, she really would be able to see Russia from her house … but not from Juneau/Wasilla/Anchorage where she lived while she was governor and McCain’s running mate.

We saw a bear! Driving along the Klondike Highway near Carcross, there was a black bear ambling along the side of the road, munching on greenery. We stopped to take photos from the car with the window down, with him on the other side of the crash barrier about 2 metres away. He was far more interested in whatever he was eating than in us, thankfully. We have bought some bear spray, though, in case we get really up close to one while we’re walking or camping.

We found a lovely little sourdough bakery in Carcross – breads, scrolls, cakes & other baked goodies, and free coffee. Then into Whitehorse to get a few things & fill our water containers. We stealth-camped just off Highway 1, The Alaska Highway, on an access track to the power line. Nice little campsite, and we’ve saved the GPS coordinates in case we drive back that way, although we’re hoping to go via Chicken and Dawson, which are further north.

Hopefully as close as we will ever come to a bear, and hopefully always in a car.

Rhubarb that almost grows like a weed in Skagway in Jewell Garden

Whites Pass north of Skagway, cold tundra that receives 7 metres of snow a year

Whites Pass between Skagway and Whitehorse

Free camping Scandinavian style in the forest west of Whitehorse in the Yukon

Roadside stop for lunch east of Tok