Day 22 - Resting in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory

Wednesday 7/12/2006

We all slept very well and we were not in a big rush to get up.

The kids are asleep in the trailer

Nice job on the cleanup, Izzy!

Everything is clean, stacked or parked!

We had a couple of pressing things to take care of today. First, we needed to get the chipped windshield repaired. We were hit by a small rock when we met a truck near Liard Hot Springs. I was concerned that we had a lot of bumpy roads ahead and that the windshield would crack. We swung by the local Wal-Mart to develop some pictures while we were out on errands.

A small access hole is drilled through the crack and the first glass

Resin is pressed through the white tube into the crack

It took about 1/2 hour to get it repaired. They drilled an access hole in the crack, through the first glass layer. Resin was then pressed through this hole to fill the crack itself. That whole gadget above is only about 4 inches wide even though it looks quite big. They used a bit of UV light to cure the solution, then filled the surface cavity with more transparent stuff after which it was all cleaned off with a razor blade. It came out very well. You can still see a tiny dot, where they drilled the access hole, but in between all the smashed bugs it is impossible to locate unless you know what you are looking for. This us about $30 to get fixed.

While we were getting our windshield repaired we asked the technician about places to get our laundry done. He pointed us to a good shop a few blocks down. We swung by there and used a few large loads, left it running while we did some exploring. We stopped by a used book store nearby. They did not have that much in stock. Pretty much everything was 1/2 sticker price, so it was not that cheap. We found a few books. We swung by the laundry place and moved our things over to a huge gas dryer.

Erik is loading up the large gas dryer at a Laundromat in Whitehorse

Based on the load size the attendant told us it would take about 1 hour to get it dried. We took off again and went into "downtown" of Whitehorse. As it turns out, there was not much to see there. Their Main street was sort of cute, and it had a few souvenir stores in it that we browsed. It is almost pathetic how little variety there is in T-shirt designs in this part of the country. It would seem like they all get them from the same place and then embroid the name of their town with that. We were not too inspired. One of the places had few cool T-shirts, but they were very expensive ($28/each). When I inquired why it was so expensive I got the answer that they had to be transported from very far. That was totally lame, since they come from China to New Hampshire for less than half..

A view of Main St in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory

When we returned back to the Laundromat, we folded our things and then went over to a thrift shop next door. The boys were very excited. In the end, they had mostly junk in there. When we came out we saw a tiny compact car called "Smartcar" parked outside the Laundromat. I spent a bit of time and talked with the owner. It had a 3 cylinder diesel engine and gave him about 80 miles per gallon. It had only two seats, but a nice and large back seat. He had bought it through Mercedes and claimed they were not sold in the US (yet) since the engine was only 900cc, slightly below the threshold accepted in the US. The owner also claimed it would almost fit on a long bed pickup, sticking out only 3 inches. That should give you an idea of how big (small) it was. I am already starting to scout out for a coming camping adventure in Europe.

After we had returned back to camp, we made a second trip down into town with Isabella as well, for some food shopping. They have some very good yoghurt in Canada. Actually, many of their dairy products are better. When Karl helped load the belt by the cash register, he was so occupied with keeping one of his toy cars rolling on that food belt that he lost a large yoghurt tub on the floor. It was a big splatter. Hopefully that taught him a valuable lesson. We made some steaks on the BBQ for dinner and then made plans to leave early the next morning.

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All Pictures (c) 2006 Hamnqvist, Background features the Yukon Sky.