A New Adventure

"The whole land was aflame with autumn colours, the birches and aspens yellow, the shrubs above the timber-line crimson, the sky frost blue. Etched against it were ragged V's of mallard ducks going south for the winter like the people we had passed on the train (the goldrush train headed home)." (excerpt from "I Married the Klondike" by Laura Betrice Berton)

Autumn is a great time of year to travel the Canadian landscapes. This land is diverse in topography, climate, and natural resources, but shares a rugged beauty and is filled with warm people ready to share their unique stories. I'm finding great joy in hearing stories of travellers, locals, and fellow adventurers. I'll have to share some of those stories here in the weeks to come.
Marcel and I left last Sunday, September 16th from Beamsville, Ontario and planned out seven days of 10 hours of driving each to make it to Whitehorse, The Yukon by Saturday, September 22. I have to say, I love that it is called "The" Yukon, not just Yukon... there is authority and presence held within the added pronoun.I've lived in three of Canada's provinces and have travelled through all of them, but living in a territory is new to me and I'm excited about the allure and "newness" that is to be explored here.
After Marcel accepted a job here, much of our time and vision was spent on the initial journey here. Many questions ran through our mind that included subjects such as: housing? phones? fly? drive? vehicle? how much are groceries? what is the best route? Is this too crazy, even for us??! Can we afford to take this risk to gain valuable experience? It was a whirlwind of packing and planning. It felt good to hit the road and know that whatever gone done was done and whatever didn't get scratched off our climbing to-do list would have to wait... our only job was to concentrate on our route and enjoy the drive. I will have to blog about the 7 days in a vehicle together which was an adventure in itself.
Now that we have arrived in Whitehorse, we face new challenges. We arrived on a Saturday night and our hostel was full so we were offered the VW van that was buried behind a tree in the backyard. Marcel was quite excited about the prospect, "We'll never have this opportunity again!" "Imagine what we could tell our kids one day!'... while, I thought we had had enough rugged experiences already (camping two nights in chilly temps, staying with a random friend we met on a plane a few weeks earlier, and experiencing some interesting motels). Tired, overwhelmed, and emotional-- I won out. We had only stayed in two hotels on our entire journey, so I reasoned that we deserved a good night's sleep before taking in all the sights of our new hometown.
We stayed at the Best Western and it was beautiful! Clean, soft sheets and an abundance of white towels and fluffy pillows were a welcome sight to my tired, stunned self. You would think that driving across the country would allow you to adjust to the time changes slowly (we went through three (central, mountain, and now we are in pacific), but we were still exhausted by 8:30 and alert by 6 am. Sunday morning we made ourselves stay in bed as long as possible to adjust to Pacific Time and to get our money's worth at this fabulous estate.
There is much yet to tell, but I've been sitting in this big red starbucks chair for a couple hours now and probably should head out to explore a little more today. Starbucks-- what a comfort :) They are almost out of pumpkin spice lattes here and we are supposed to be getting snow next Monday so maybe the Candy Cane White Hot Chocolates will come out earlier here :)

Signing out for now,

Ames
Whitehorse, YT