Day 18 Tuesday July 26th Whitehorse to Rabid Grizly BC.

During the first of this trip I have felt that my car was not producing the boost is should be, there seem to some resistance in 21-2600 rpm area, while have the oil change I was inform that I failed to put the O-ring on the end of the filter stick. Today driving the car the boost resistance was gone, my old car was back, a small thing with a big impact of engine performance. 

All along the way, there are car park with warning flags, I suspect berry picking.  At all the visitor centres and even on the radio, berry picking is talked about as one the most important pastimes of the year.  I decide to pullover and have a look, wild strawberries, very little ones, no more than a centimeter; it would take a long time to pick enough for a pie.  Here too Bitter or Slip-jack boletes edible but not good, they need to be peeled and dried in the oven, in the end you can still get an unhappy stomach.  

 

Stopping next at Morley River, a point where two rivers meet.  Here too strawberries, I take pic of flowers and watch as a fish leaps for a fly. Shortly afterward I see the first dead forest from beetle.  All the free firewood at Yukon camp grounds was beetle killed pine trees.

Turning onto highway 37 south, you feel that this is back way into BC, narrow winding hilly road with good pavement but no center line. After 15km’s I reach forest fire one that last the next 30 km’s. I pull over to look at a pond within the fire zone and see that it’s a kettle pond, small and very deep, the side of the pond drop off right away.  Kettle ponds are formed by chunks of ice the brake off a receding glacier.

Last night I noticed that the sun went down in Whitehorse, late but it was actually dark at 1am, heading south now I can expect earlier nights.  I pull off and look at rest area map at Rabbit Grizzly and about 200m further down the road is a nice flat site with fire pit, lake view and table, I pull in for the night, later while walking to the lake for water to kill the fire I notice there is an outhouse which check to find its fully stocked, perfect and free. 

Drove just 628km today.