2004/06 Yukon trip - Getting there - Watson Lake |
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We chose to turn east at this point and head into the closest town, which was Watson Lake. The major attraction in town is the “Signpost Forest”, started 60 years ago by a homesick soldier who put up a signpost to his home town. Since then it has grown to tens of thousands of signs. Of course, to participate in this you first have to steal a sign from your home town.
Watson Lake advertises itself as the “Gateway to the Yukon” and our experience has been that “gateways” usually only have shops and other opportunities to spend money. In this case we were happy to spend. I picked up a card reader for Sandie’s camcorder, whose relationship with my laptop had broken down, and also a few screws for fixing the camper’s sewer connection. We also needed food and a laundromat, and a place to pick up fresh water and dump our sewer tanks.
There were lots of expensive campgrounds in town, but they looked like cattle pens, so we headed out to the real Watson Lake (the town is actually on Wye Lake) and camped there in a cheap, spacious, but otherwise unexciting Yukon government campground.
This was a good point to end part 1 of this saga. We had been four weeks on the road and had just made it to the Yukon, about halfway up the Alaska Highway. Inuvik, our ultimate destination, is about a thousand miles north of Watson Lake.
End of Part 1, Getting to the Yukon