Great Alaska Road Trip: Day 8

We made it to the Yukon!

Welcome to Day 8 of the Great Alaska Road Trip!

I left off the last blog with us having a cozy night tucked away off the Alaska Highway.

I woke up the following morning at 3:30 am, with my body still not adjusted to the new time zone. As I was trying to force myself to drift back off to sleep, I heard something.

It was a melody coming from outside.

The same three notes repeat in rounds, over and over.

The birds! The birds were literally singing a song!

I jumped out of the van to listen more closely, and marveled at the beautiful voices.

The birds here don’t chirp – they literally sing! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing!

I got back in bed but lay wide awake, so excited about where we were.

R got up a couple of hours later, and we hit the road.

About half an hour into the drive, we pulled into a lookout point to make some hot chocolate and eat breakfast. It was magical!

Our goal for the day was to get to Whitehorse, and there was still a lot of driving left to do, so we didn’t stay for long.

The Alaska Highway dips in and out between BC and Yukon, so we ended up crossing between them multiple times before noon. The first crossing was an exciting one, though!

Just a few minutes later, we arrived at a spot that I had been especially excited for – the Sign Post Forest.

The Sign Post Forest is a massive collection of street signs, license plates, and other random assortments of signed items, all attached to wooden posts around in a kind of “forest” that you can wander through.

The forest was started in 1942 when a homesick soldier put up a signpost from his hometown. Today, it has grown to almost 100,000 signs!

Walking around and reading them all was an incredible experience. Some of them were really inspiring.

R and I decided we have to add our own, so we painted on our small plastic cutting board and hung up a little message of our own.

It’s a cool feeling to know we’ll be forever immortalized in the Sign Post Forest!

We then had a quick lunch at Nugget Restaurant and continued on our way to Whitehorse.

We got to Whitehorse almost 5 hours later, and ended up settling into a quiet and secluded spot amongst the trees (and next to a shooting range, which was luckily closed that evening).

We set up our bug net, cooked a quick dinner, and watched Netflix until we were too tired to stay up any longer.

That night was our first time experiencing the midnight sun, and it absolutely blew our minds! The sun was shining bright into our windows well into the night.

I’ll be continuing to write about our trip from Ontario – Alaska as we are on the road in our minivan camper. Don’t forget to turn on email notifications so you don’t miss a day!

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