July 11, July 11, 2010

Since we had no electric to run the alarm clock, and I was not good at figuring out my alarm on my phone, we got to sleep in til 7am.!! Yeah. And my sweet husband turned on the generator, so I had a hair straightener and coffee!

Started the day off headed toward Watson Lake, home of the Sign Forest. Once we got here we decided to empty the tanks, $5 to empty them at a campground, only to find out that 1 block away was a free dump station. Paul wasn’t aware there were free facilities in some towns. Oh well.

Went to the sign forest, just rows and rows of signs from all over the world. Lots of license plates, wood signs, street and town signs, just about anything people could write on. We of course had planned to make a sign, but never got around to it. The girls were disappointed, until we came across a city of Ottawa sign from the street dept,, had the street dept. peoples name on it from many years ago, Paul thought probably 25 years ago or so, he knew some of the people, so we just borrowed a corner of it and signed our family name and date to it!!!! Saw another sign with some people from Ottawa on it, no last names though. The sign forest was started around 1941 when a soldier who was working on the Alaskan Highway, who was from Decatur Illinois, was homesick and hung a sign of his hometown on a tree, and it just took off. It was really kinda neat! While we were there we also watched a movie on the building of the Highway, kinda interesting, more for Paul than the girls and I.

Saw quite a few buffalo today as we were heading to Watson Lake. they are huge! Had babies with them also.

From there we headed to Whitehorse where we are spending the night, suppose to be a fairly larger town, with a little shopping and a brewery for Paul. I am told there is also a Walmart in Whitehorse.

Along our drive we came across a sign to the Rancheria Falls. We decided to pull off and take the hike. Wow how amazing. There was a wooden walkway back to the falls, very impressive falls, certainly glad we pulled over for that! Then shortly after we left we encountered 2 more black bear just grazing alongside the road. One was brown and one was black. We stopped and watched for a while, they are truly amazing!!