Day Eight - Watson Lake

The morning of July 3 started with a quick pack-up of camp (Kinaskin Lake) and then a short hike to Natadesleen Lake which was reported to be an excellent fishing lake! Well the lake was full of fish but they just weren't biting - they were jumping all around us though which was a little frustrating! The only thing that was in abundance and around us? Mosquitoes!!! I've never, ever seen bugs like that before.

Mom (man are you my favorite mom right now) gave both of us a great gifts in the form of bug hats! We've only used them once and that was during the hike to Natadesleen Lake. If I hadn't worn the face shield I would have moved off the lake within minutes...actually I probably wouldn't have made it to the lake in the first place! As you can see from dad's hand (wasn't he nice to not squish the bugs until after I took the

picture?) the little blood suckers were out in force! I'm thinking I'll need a transfusion when I return home!

After leaving the lake we headed north for Dease Lake. The plan was to camp there if we could find a place with showers and wifi! Man did that plan change.

One the way to Dease Lake we spotted the scrawniest black bear we've seen. It was so much skinnier than any of the others that we've seen that I worry that it will not make it through the winter. It would prove to be one of two bears that we saw that day - the other was right on the BC/Yukon boarder - the size difference stunning (second bear below)! Other than seeing the bear we also took the time to stop at Upper Gnat Lake to do a little fishing! It was at this lake that I continued my dominance of all things fishing! Dad managed to catch the North American Plate, a willow tree, and not much else! Me? Well I managed to catch two fish - actually it was three but I dropped one (the largest and YES dad will back me up on that claim) when trying to get it out of the net. Unfortunately it landed very close to the lake and actually bounced into the lake. Before I could "re-net" it, it swam away! At this point the fish count stands as: Aggie 4 - John 0 (and that doesn't include the one that got away!). We'll do some more fishing in Prince George - perhaps dad will redeem himself!

As you enter Dease Lake you cross the Arctic-Pacific Divide and rivers start draining in to the Arctic Ocean. It was interesting to see as rivers appeared to be running in the wrong direction! We stopped in Dease Lake long enough to grab a quick lunch at the local deli and to do a little up-date on the blog, and check my email. That when I got my "welcome to reality" email from my doctoral advisor. We had planned to drive down to Telegraph Creek but after a relatively quick discussion we decided that we would continue heading north and would then start the week long drive south. This will shorten our trip by about 10 days - but neither of us are too upset as we are finding the process of packing and unpacking the truck very tiring!

So from Dease Lake we started heading north with the intended destination of Boya Lake Provincial Park. As we approached the lake we were driving through torrential rain so decided that we would keep driving until we were no longer in the rain! Well that ended up being a lot longer than we had intended so the final destination quickly changed from Boya Lake P.P. to Watson Lake Yukon.

As we approached the Yukon boarder and the junction with the Alaska Highway we saw the second bear of the day. This is the one that I mention earlier...huge! if you look really close you can see the million bugs that are harassing this giant! He was quite content to site and eat grass which was excellent as it allow both dad and I to take a lot of pictures.

Of course I was also able to get a picture of the "Best Place on Earth" sign - perhaps the province provides food for him to sit on the BC side of the boarder!! This was the largest black bear we've seen and like the sow that we saw on the way to Stewart he was looking really healthy.

Watson Lake isn't very far from the boarder but before we checked into our campsite for the night (campground services - great spot with strong wifi and showers!!) we stopped at the tourism info centre. The two women who worked in the centre (one a 22 year veteran who also has a house close to Malaspina!) were by far the most friendly, enthusiastic, and helpful info centre staff we've come across! The info centre is also the home of the Sign Post Forest - which is an amazing sight to see!

Dad has a friend (former co-worker) who posted signs from the island so we did a search through the over 10,000 signs to try and find them! We were not successful but I did find signs from Nanaimo, Powell River, Gabriola Island, Texada, Cedar by the Sea and...Lake Cowichan!!!

That's it for the day! Below you may have read about my attempt to up-date the blog in my tent while the rain came down in buckets!