Along the Klondike and Campbell Highways

Just a little north of Whitehorse, we left the Alaska Highway for the first time in ages and drove north along the Klondike, then east along the Robert Campbell.

These names may seem to slip off my tongue easily (despite my terrible map skills) only because I’ve been hearing Tracy and Melanie plan their trips over and over, and I’ve asked Melanie about the road conditions where they’ve gone ahead of us.

She and Doug did the entire Campbell Highway (I believe), where we don’t dare to take the Airstream. (This is exactly why they traded theirs in.) We still wanted to go up a little off the main routes, so we drove to this tiny town of Faro. More on the town, later.

Our one-day detour trip involved much dust due to road work (the highways here are in a constant state of deterioration and repair), then a storm that seemed like sleet. The temps went from the lows 70s to the low 50s and back in minutes.

The views were gorgeous even when it was raining. There weren’t many areas where we could pull off to take photos, plus, I imagine all these scenes increase in drama as we go north, but I want to document what I can even if it’s just through the truck window.

This is the Yukon River where we pulled off for a lunch stop. You can’t see in this picture, but two canoes are paddling way off on the far right. Wouldn’t that be amazing? I’ve actually zoomed in a little, that’s how big these views are.

This first morning after we arrived in Faro, we hiked to a waterfall, which I couldn’t get a good shot of because of how deep and dark the canyon is there. It’s way the heck down, with rich forests all around.

A lovely viewing platform makes for a good focal point, though. I might hike to it again in the evening to see how the light down the canyon is then. The hikes around here seem diverse and plentiful—it’s why we stopped here.

The woods are aspen, lodgepole pine, and white spruce, with the aspen leaves making a beautiful sound when the breeze blows through them, and the pine and spruce standing up tall and singular, except the fallen ones from a fire in the 1960s, but even then they’re still damn amazing.

The trail feels like it’s packed peat, but really it’s thick layers of moss on top of volcanic ash from a nearby eruption that was fairly recent (1,200 years ago). It feels slightly spongy to walk on.

We added fox to our wildlife log of moose, bears, caribou, bison, and sheep, but these fox are townies. It’s an odd little town, although maybe not odd compared to other places in Yukon. I’ll make more impressions and write back!