Watson Lake and Liard Hot Springs

After our trip up to Dawson City and then to Whitehorse, it was time to start back toward the lower 48. One of the first stops along that route is Watson Lake, home of the worlds largest sign forest. Actually there are more signs (88,000) than people (800) by a couple of orders of magnitude!

Our trip thru the Yukon continue to bear out the slogan “Larger than Life.” The place is big. The distances vast. The vistas endless.

Wolf Creek Campground.

A rustic bridge. Seemed pretty sturdy to us. Sturdy enough to drive across.

Fireweed. We learned to really appreciate this hardy plant. The name comes from the fact that it’s usually the first plant that grows in a burned out area after a forest fire. It’s more of a wildflower than a weed, although I guess the line is pretty blurry. The blooms start at the bottom and progress up to the top. Then the bottom petals start to die off. When the last of the topmost blooms dies, the plant goes to seed, summer is over and winter has arrived. Notice that the plants above are totally gone to seed….

We collected a couple stalks of fireweed that had gone to seed. It will be interesting to see if it will grow down south.

 

Lots of migrating birds make stops on both their northward and southward journeys. We found the swan hangout, absent any swans, unfortunately.

Crossing the line heading south back into BC from the Yukon.

A meal stop on the side of the road.

Snow capped mountains in August. Ominous!

Our contribution to the sign collection. The story is that a military guy got bored and posted a sign with the name of his home town. Other military guys followed suit. The tradition stuck and people passing through to this day post their signs. Some were amazingly elaborate, some pretty simple.

The lady in the local visitors center said that Watson Lake is home both to the largest sign forest and the largest collection of un-prosecuted contraband. Turns out that many of the signs have been liberated from their original homes. We saw town signs, road signs, license plates, and quite a few business signs.

Liard is where we found the bison. (or buffalo?) Turns out that the correct name is bison. Buffalo are found in Asia and Africa, although the names are used interchangeably.

Moose!

A fog bow. No color and not cold enough (we think) to be an ice bow. And it was foggy that day.

Fireside. During the Alaska highway construction, fires were kept burning pretty much continuously to provide a place to warm up.

One of the more interesting tow-behinds we saw. No reason to leave any of the toys at home, I guess.

The 3rd of the hot springs we visited, and probably our favorite.

It was about a 10 minute walk along a boardwalk through the forest to get to the hot springs. Liard was the most natural setting of the hot springs. The springs are actually just a wide spot in the river. The water backs up as it flows down the hill, making a natural, and very hot pool. The hot springs were very popular with soldiers building the Alaska highway. After a day of road building in the winter weather, the springs must have felt wonderful! It sure felt wonderful to us!

Early morning mist at the hot springs. Worth the chilly walk!

Given the location of the springs, we wondered about bears. Sure enough, a brown bear showed up and the local park rangers chased it off with “bear bangers,” shotgun shells with no pellets. There was no move to close the springs to bathing, making us wonder how the bears felt about sharing their bathtub with humans.

More bear education signs.

Bison are huge and amazing creatures. But slow. No wonder they were hunted almost to extinction.

 

But if not…