We drove the 20 miles or so through the pass from Skagway to the Yukon border, and had the most extensive grilling yet at the Canadian border. We aren’t sure if the immigration agent was just bored and wanted to talk, or if she really thought there was some sort of a problem with us, but she kept us there a while because she said she couldn’t figure out how to put our Belize registered vehicle in the computer. The whole time she was trying to do that, she was asking us about everything, including things like our best estimate of how many litres of wine remained in our two opened boxes. She wanted to know to the dollar how much cash we had, and when we told her we have cash from Canada, the US, Mexico, and Belize, she wanted us to convert all the non-Canadian currencies to Canadian dollars and give her a total in Canadian dollars. After watching us count cash, add together what we each carried, and run the non-Canadian amounts through a converter for what seemed like forever, she finally said it didn’t seem like we were going to come up with more than $10,000 each and told us we could stop, which was sort of stupid because I don’t think our total was much over $1,000, US or Canadian. After more questions about the dogs, what we did for work before we were retired, whether or not we were really retired, and a few other truly random things, she finally waved us through, mostly, I think, because another car had pulled up behind us. We drove to Whitehorse where we had a much anticipated shopping trip at the Real Canadian Superstore. We got permission to stay in the car park for the night, so we took the dogs for a walk along the river and settled in for the evening.
In the morning, we took a wonderful five mile walk along the river in Whitehorse from the Klondike paddle steamer to the dam past the fish ladder. It was chilly but sunny, and very interesting, with a nice mix of history and nature. We liked Whitehorse when we passed through on our way to Alaska, and we still liked it on our way back.
We then got on the road to Watson Lake, and marveled at the beautiful fall foliage. We got to Watson Lake around 6 and went to the visitor center to get the milepost guide for the Cassiar, and then went to the grocery store for the local fireweed honey we couldn’t get in July. We were glad we’d walked in Whitehorse in the morning because it was raining in Watson Lake, but that turned out to be a good thing because it meant the fires were out and the Cassiar Highway was open.
