*This is the story of our journey from Liard Hot Springs to Whitehorse, Yukon.*

We woke up at a decent hour, but the sun was well into the sky by the time we were up. As we started to pack up, I couldn’t help but notice that our camping neighbor was up, and considering that he also had an adventure bike, I had no choice but to start talking with him to find out about his journey.

Thirty minutes later and I was still learning about this guy and his life and where he was headed. He came down from Alaska and this was his first time taking a big trip on his adventure bike. I don’t remember all of the details that he shared, but he didn’t spare many and was friendly nonetheless. Didn’t hurt that the longer he talked, the more time it gave Emmy to pack everything up :p.

Our conversation got cut short because it came time for me to actually help Emmy pack up, but before we parted, he let us know to stay at this really cool place in Tok, AK. It’s apparently pretty famous in the biker community. What’s funny is that Emmy told me about this place the day before when she was researching where we’d stay for the night, and we’d already made reservations. I guess it’s extra confirmation that Em found an awesome place to stay!

We headed out not long after, and the day was beautiful as we drove through northern BC.

We crossed into the Yukon around noon and drove through more beautiful scenery before we pulled over at Watson Lake to view the Sign Post Forest. Em had read about this before we left on the trip and was *adamant* that we had to stop there. Sure enough, right in the middle of the town off the side of the road was this large forest of signs. It honestly felt more like a signpost maze or one of those British gardens with the really tall bushes that makes a maze.

We spent about 15-20 minutes going through the different avenues of the forest. The majority of the signs were license plates, but there were a few actual road or street signs. It was really fun to try to find the different state license plates with the different designs. It also became quite clear that California’s current white style license plate is about as boring as it gets as far as license plate designs go.

After we got our fill of license plates, we tried to find a coffee shop so I could check-in with work for an hour or so. Not surprisingly, Watson Lake, YT didn’t have any coffee shops which in hindsight makes sense considering we are in the freaking Yukon but still was inconvenient.

We ended up finding a restaurant attached to gas station/mart that let us work for a bit, and despite the lack of coffee shops, there was incredible LTE cell service. I was able to setup and get to work while Emmy went an ordered lunch for us.

We split a burger and fries which was actually pretty good, but apparently not enough to satiate Emmy because not 10 minutes later did she come back from the general store with a liter of chocolate milk! She was convinced that it was soooo baby and just the cuuuutest liter of milk ever. I tried to convince her that it was still an *entire* liter of milk, like how would she even drink it all! Undismayed by my negativity, she proceeded to chug as much of the milk as she could. Kid you not, she couldn’t even finish a quarter of it before she was milk drunk and just *soooo* full. My goodness woman. I had to make her finish at least half of it but she was certain that I was torturing her… dunno, I feel like I was being the reasonable one, but maybe buying a liter of chocolate milk on a whim after lunch is normal… I love her regardless.

After an hour or so of being in that restaurant, we packed up to get back on the road. It was pretty cold out so I was trying to put my warmer gloves on, but *appaaaarently* I wasn’t moving fast enough for Emmy because she was just mercilessly mocking me for taking my sweet time getting my gloves on (I promise I was trying really hard to put them on, it was just tough). I get my gloves on finally and give her smirk like Ha, I got them on! And then I realized that I completely forgot to put my helmet on, so I had to redo everything lol. Ya, I kinda deserved the jeers at this point.

We finally got back on the road, and it was pretty overcast by this time and the temperature was dropping. As we’d drive, you would see these massive sections of cloud where the rain was falling heavy and we’d just sit and pray that we’d be able to drive past them without getting drenched. Aaaand, unfortunately, those prayers fell flat because sure enough, we drove right through one of those big sections of rain. We pulled over to put on our rain liners and carried on.

It’s a funny thing because when you aren’t wearing your rain gear, you would do anything to avoid the cold rain, but once you spend 10 minutes on the side of the road in the cold rain trying to put on rain gear, you want the rain to last because you don’t want to feel like you put all of your gear on for nothing.

Besides the cold and off/on rain, the drive was still pretty as we drove through the endless forest and rolling hills seeing a few more bears and bison along the way.

We made it to Whitehorse, YT that evening around 8pm or so, but if we didn’t know any better, we would have guessed it was 3pm latest. We found and registered with the campground and then went to set up our tent. At this point, we’ve had dry weather for the last several hours, but the weather didn’t want to cooperate because we had to set up our tent in the rain, but literally 5 minutes after we finished setting up the rain stopped. So it rained just enough to piss us off, but not enough to make us miserable.

We made po-ritos for dinner and then headed to the local McDonald’s so that I could get some more work done. We got there around 9:30pm, ordered a drink and then found a place next to an outlet so I could work.

The restaurant was surprisingly busy this time of night and not to mention that most people here were eating ice cream! Em and I couldn’t help but laugh because ice cream was just the furthest thing from our minds, yet people were coming in acting like it’s the middle of summer.

Maybe 15 minutes into our stay, we somehow got involved in the conversation with the two old men next to us. I’m not sure which side initiated us into the conversation, but we literally ended up talking for the next 1.5 hours. These guys were pretty lively and were very proud of their town and had no shortage of stories to share with us.

I didn’t get near enough work done that night, but it was so worth it because we had the *best* time sharing stories with those guys.

We went back to our campsite at midnight since the MD closed, and it *wasn’t even dark yet!* It’s starting to set in that we are pretty freaking far north. Emmy went right to bed, but I still had a few hours of work to do before I could call it a night. I think I was up till 3am working in the tent before I went to bed. It probably was a site to see because it was so cold that night that had to code with my laptop *in* my sleeping bag, but then would have to pop out for air frequently because it would get too hot.

But it’s hard to complain when you have the ability to work and be productive in the Yukon and still have time to enjoy everything else :).

-RJ