The Yukon Keeps Me Up All Night

I’m writing this just shy of 1:30 in the morning.  At daybreak.

Bollocks to all I’d said about the midnight sun on that ferry:  This is more like the real deal, here.  It’s the longest day of the year, and I’m in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.  I just got back from a really long, really rough off-road drive to the top of a local mountain where I watched the sun not set. 

Until about 11:30PM or so, the town was full-on daylight.  Utterly surreal.  There are people in bunches on the streets still – the hotel clerk described everyone’s attitude the day following this local holiday as “hungover.”  But for good stretches there’s no one, during what looks like mid-afternoon.  Instant ghost town, just add sunlight.

Saw a band in a local bar doing a cover of “Blister in the Sun.”  Which would be appropriate if it weren’t really a song about masturbation.

I went to the top of Grey Mountain in the hopes of seeing something ridiculously trans-physical, to see the sun instantly switch sides of the sky, or something.  But it doesn’t work that way.  What happens is:  You get a sunset which just kind of hangs around and turns into a sunrise.  It’s a good hour or two of dusk, but that’s it.  Further north, I suppose, there’s less than that.

I can’t offer any photographic proof; I didn’t see the sun right next to the moon (or two suns – think of what I could’ve done with that one...).  And what would a shot of sunny downtown Whitehorse do for you, even if it was taken at 2AM?

I’d meant to spend today’s entry talking about just how stupefyingly beautiful everything is and how there’s no way photos can possibly do it justice... but right now I’m so tired all I’m going to offer up are a couple of photos.

By the way, I’m in Canada because that’s how you get from Alaska to Alaska.  It’s sweltering, up here:  A high of 30 degrees Celsius tomorrow – it’s just shy of their all-time record high of 34.  Whatever that is.  Between kilometers and Celsius and the monetary exchange rate and the fact that there’s sun beating my window just in time for Conan’s sign-off, I’m a little confused, right now.

Here’s something confusing:  You know what’s really hard to get in the Yukon?  Ice!  Every gas station is out.  “We just can’t keep up,” is what I’m told.  Weird.

And, hey:  Out of curiosity (Yes, gentle reader, just out of curiosity...), I just grabbed a phone book and looked and... Yes!  There’s a listing in the yellow pages for Escort Services.  There are... Yukon Hos!

Graffiti of the Day:  “Dick Cheney Was Here” – Port-a-Potty in the Robinson Roadhouse Historic Site, north of Carcross

G’night, eh.

--From Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada

tags: road trip 2004  alaska  yukon territory  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    reddit