Alaska or Bust: Revisited: Kledo River Bridge, BC to Big Creek, YT (6/23/2017)

Day 10
1964, the Plan: Haines Junction, YT to Tetlin Junction, YT.
1964, the Actuality: On Sunday, July 26, the Explorer Scouts traveled from the Kledo Creek Bridge to Big Creek in YT.

Friday, June 23, 2017
We left our cabin at Tetsa River Campground and continued on the Alaska Highway/BC-97, bound for Big Creek ourselves.

But first breakfast, a cinnamon bun from
the "Cinnamon Bun Centre of the Galactic Universe"

And we shared a big breakfast plate
with their home-cured bacon

Moose and calf sighting!

Then a Ovis dalli stonei/Stone Sheep sighting! The stone sheep
like to use the gravel of the roads as their salt lick (KSS)

We were to also see a caribou run across the road, and a large rodent, possibly a muskrat.

Folded Mountain, where tectonic/plate
collisions caused the limestone to buckle into folds

Muncho Lake, where the original route of the Alaska Highway
followed the tops of the cliff; it was then relocated by
benching into the cliff closer to lake level

Muncho Lake, with a color attributed to copper oxide

Muncho Lake

Didn't see any stone sheep at the natural salt lick

Here the Alaska Highway is gravel!

Look at the dust kicked up on the gravel section

Bison bison athabascae/Wood Bison, the
largest terrestrial animal in North America

Another herd of wood bison (KSS)

Bison calf (KSS)

Bison parent? (KSS)

Lower Liard River Bridge (1943), the only remaining suspension bridge
on the Alaska Highway, was constructed with materials from the
Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which had collapsed in 1940

A black bear sighting! We saw two more bears and a snowshoe hare today

This bear crawled into a culvert

Historic Milepost 585 and cairn at the border
between British Columbia and the Yukon Territory

Kent straddles the border

Boreal forest made up of aspens and black spruce;
boreal refers to having a sub-arctic climate

1964: The Explorer Scouts enter the Yukon Territory (Dr M)

2017: Kent enters the Yukon Territory

The Alaska Highway actually crosses the BC/YT border six times over about 50 miles. Now the Alaska Highway is designated YT-1.

Kent and Tamiko at the Yukon border (KSS)

The Alaska Highway near Contact Creek, where the 340th Regiment
working from the north met the 35th Regiment working from the south
in September 1942 to complete the southern sector of the Alaska Highway

Signpost Forest in Watson Lake, YT (KSS) was started by a US Army
soldier working on the Alaska Highway in 1942

Not just road signs, but personalized signs as well
(a Roadside America attraction)

The Chapel (1942) was an interdenominational church built at the
Watson Lake airport during construction of the Alaska Highway;
it is now used by the Liard Evangelical Free Church