Pat Bean's blog

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Sign Post Forest at Watson Lake alongside the Alaskan Highway. — Wikimedia photo

2001 Memories of a Non-Wandering Wanderer

          It was going to be a long day’s drive, and so I was on the road at 5 a.m., sharing it with a pumpkin orange and lavender sunrise that breathed joy into my pores.

My drive took me past Muncho Lake Provincial Park. The lake, which I followed for a bit, was just one of several clean, clear blue bodies of water along the way. The biggest one was Teslin Lake, which I noted in my journal, had an average depth of 184 feet.

At Liard Hot Springs, at Mile Marker 496, I stopped for a short hike to the springs and the marsh’s hanging gardens, which consisted of a jumble of rocks with plants hanging down the sides while a series of small falls trickled past. The place had a pungent, sulphur odor that tickled my sense of smell, and encouraged me not to linger overly long..

Alpha Pool in Liard River Hot Springs along the Alaskan Highway in British Columbia. — Wikimedia photo

At Watson Lake, Mile Marker 635, I refueled and gawked at the famous Sign Post Forest, which now has about 100,000 signs. “Sort of icky,” I wrote in my journal, noting that nature got my juices flowing better.

The fake forest began in 1942 when Pvt. Carl Lindley was ordered to repair a simple sign post noting the distances to various points along the road when it was being built. He personalized the sign by adding his home town of Danville, Illinois, 2,835 miles away.

Meanwhile, the warning signs of moose and caribou on the road, which had been lying to me,:told the truth this day. I saw several of each, plus deer, too, as my winding drive took me across the British Columbia-Yukon border seven times.

After a long day’s drive of nearly 600 miles, with several sightseeing stops along the way, it was almost 10 p.m., but still light, when I finally pulled into Whitehorse, where my room at the High Country Inn had been upgraded. I had my own Jacuzzi, and I took advantage of it.

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Bean Pat: Two Photographs: http://tinyurl.com/hylkuth Unusual shots of a peregrine falcon, one of my favorite birds. I usually saw them when they flew below me on my hike up to the top of Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park. This is a bird we humans have helped save from extinction.