ZR-1 Alaskan Adventure Travel Log

[QB93Z]

On Friday, the 11th day of our trip, we left Haines Junction, Yukon and headed northwest on the Alaska Highway toward Alaska. The first part of today's route runs along Kluane National Park. The park is dominated by the St Elias Mountains:


As we moved further north, we traveled on the high Yukon tundra. The tundra is a wet swampy area that in the winter is frozen deep under ground. In the summer months, the surface melts and there are large areas of standing water that cannot drain into the soil. The plants that thrive in the tundra include the Black Spruce, the tall, skinny, scruffy-looking evergreens that dominate the forests. The Black Spruce trees may be hundreds of years old. They grow slowly and it may take 100 years to reach a two-inch diameter trunk:


There is a little more traffic today but there was still a lot of open road:


The largest body of water in the Yukon is Lake Kluane:


Here we are crossing the south end of Lake Kluane, approaching a weathered mountain:


This area suffered a large forest fire a few years ago. One of the first plants that regrows after a forest fire is Fire Weed:


Jim