Grateful and Proud: Yukon—all the Ws

In the past, when we talked with friends about our Airstream travels and someone asked about our favorite place, we used to scratch our heads. We’d been to so many diverse places; plus, what constitutes “favorite”? Most beautiful? Most fun? Most friendly? Best hiking, or best kayaking? To make things easier, I started picking Yukon, partly because it’s so unexpected. By now I believe that Yukon may truly be my favorite place we visited.

I’ve been putting off writing this post for months, and I finally figured out that’s because I have so much to say about this gigantic hunk of glorious land. So, I decided to divide it into at least two posts. This one is all the Ws—the facts about the place—which is pretty funny seeing as how I suck at providing facts, and when I do try to provide them, I often get them wrong. But I’ll go ahead and give you my version of the facts, and the next post in this series will be about our various experiences in Yukon.

What: “Yukon” or “The Yukon”

That part of Canada used to be The Yukon Territories, and then, when it became a province, it became The Yukon. As far as I could collect when I was there—this was June, 2023—the government (don’t remember which one) wanted it to become just plain “Yukon” because that’s simpler: it cuts down on paint on signs and lettering on maps and such. Plus, it just makes sense when you compare it to The Alberta.

The modern set took to this change, whereas the old-timers are stuck in their “The Yukon” ways.

Where

It’s the smallest Canadian province and it’s at the western edge, so you pretty much have to drive through it when you go from the lower 48 states to Alaska.

That was the thing: we knew we had to drive through it, but we didn’t realize that doing so would be the highlight of our “summer in Alaska.”

Why & When

We were there for all of June, 2023, as we drove diagonally through the central part of the province, and then, when we drove back down to the U.S. that fall, we went through just a wee bit in the south, down near where Alaska has that stretch of land around Juneau and Sitka.

I didn’t even realize that Juneau was on such a narrow bit of land south of the rest of Alaska, until we were hiking one day in BC and ran into a guy who was from Juneau. I’m like, “What? We’re not even in Yukon, so how can you be hiking from Alaska?” Even by 2023 I still was having a hard time with maps while traveling.

Who

One of the several wonderful things about Yukon is that there are hardly any “who” at all. The last I checked, the land size is about 182,240 square miles, and the population density is about one person every four square miles. Not every four miles, but every four square miles. One person. That’s seriously sparse.

The people we did meet were friendly and, dare I say, welcoming. In the town of Whitehorse, which is the capitol, we wandered by a small old building with a community garden outside that turned out to be the Yukon Literacy Coalition. The woman who showed us around, impromptu, was so friendly and informative that we wanted to support the center somehow, so we asked if we could donate. She said, “No, but you can buy something.”

She produced a deck of cards featuring the art of someone local (whose name I can’t track down online). It’s become a prized memento of that summer; I pulled it out of our card deck rotation so I might frame some cards one day.

In a tiny town (called Faro, named after a card game, oddly) where we camped in a small field overlooking an incongruous 9-hole golf course winding around town, again the people at the “welcome center” where we stopped to pay for our campsite (it was a two-room building) showed us around exhibits about an old mine, animals that live locally, historic photos. “Come back tomorrow for the bake sale,” they said. When I rode my bike by the next day, I’d forgotten about the bake sale so didn’t have any money. You can guess the outcome. The day when I returned with money to pay folks back, I also bought some small pieces of art that we put on the fridge in the trailer. Man, I wish I knew where those were!

Yes, you run into friendly people everywhere, especially people who want visitors to spend their money there. But Yukon seemed different that way. In Alaska the vibe is more, “Spend your money then get the hell out.” In Yukon it was, “Let us tell you about our heritage, because we’re proud of it. Let us show you our natural beauty so you, too, can enjoy it. Let us share with you the wealth of the vast sky and the sweeping landscapes and the sacred wild animals we’re blessed to enjoy here.”

We were in Yukon for Canada Day, where we heard the mayor of the small town joke about the attributes Canada has (that, clear from his speech, he meant the U.S. does not have), all while he was wearing one of those hats that serves as a sun umbrella.

I’ll tell you more about that town, as well as Whitehorse and the few other populated places we visited in my next post. That one will be about the real draw of Yukon, which was the unique landscape produced by permafrost under the tundra. It’s the most gorgeous place I’ve ever been.