Whitehorse
We flew into Whitehorse at the beginning of our trip and returned there several times throughout.
It is a small town of about 20 000 people, but it has every service imaginable, including Canadian Tire and even Wal-Mart.
Since Whitehorse is the only sizeable town in the Yukon and is home to 2/3 the Territorial population, perhaps the level of convenience isn't surprising.
However the town was still a completely new experience to me.
First of all, there are very few actual "cars".
Everything is either a hard-core 4x4 owned by a local or a massive bus-sized RV with Arizona (or similar) plates on the way to Alaska.
Food in fast-food type places such as Tim Horton's is more expensive than home by up to 20%, but food in the grocery stores didn't seem to be marked up at all.
Gasoline and diesle were both expensive (~$1/L for unleaded).
All in all, an interesting place snuggled in between mountains and the mighty Yukon River.
Here are just a few pictures of Whitehorse - more will follow shortly. Click on any image for a larger version.
A typical example of murals in Whitehorse depicting images of the Gold Rush.
Murals adorn many walls of stores and buildings throughout the town.
CBC North, centre for broadcasting throughout northern Canada.
I took this picture as a contrast to the huge mass of concrete at Front and John we know as CBC Toronto.
The steamship SS Klondike was used to transport gold up and down the Yukon River during the Gold Rush.
It now sits proudly on display downtown Whitehorse.
A photo of the Yukon River just south of Whitehorse.
This area used to have fierce rapids caused by the resistant nature of the rock walls on either side of the gorge.
Because it was nearly impassable by ship, a narrow-guage railway was built to transport people and light goods while extremely skilled captains were sought to take heavier cargo by boat.
Today there are lovely hiking trails along the shore which we investigated on our last day in the Yukon.
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