Stressed out

Primo! Liard Hot Springs has been kept in its natural setting, with a boardwalk across a marsh approach. Located in a provincial park north of Muncho Lake, it hits the spot with travelers and locals. There are two pools. Alpha pool is boiling hot, but as you move away from the source, there is a cooler stream for frolicking.

The walk to the upper beta pool takes you through a tropical forest, with little hot boiling springs everywhere keeping the climate warm for ferns and even orchids. The beta pool is 9 feet deep and swimmable. Warm, but not boiling.

I took a movie of a complete stranger lost in meditation in the pool. He woke up and told me he had almost died the day before. He's driving a 30 year old bus back to Anchorage for a friend, and his brakes failed near Summit Pass. Yikes. We talked about life. He's writing a novel, and he's stuck. He figures he lived to finish it.

There was wildlife today. My first moose was a shy one, foraging in the woods near the boardwalk back from the hot springs. Nevertheless, he was clearly a moose. There were stone sheep licking the minerals from the side of the road, buffalo wallowing in dirt holes, a wolf who was gone when we went back to take his picture, a mama and cub bear, and a solo bear.

The vegetation is changing. Most of the trees are skinny and not very tall pine poles. They struggle to survive in the frozen ground most of the year. Several locations have Drunken Forests, named so because of the skinny trees that topple here and there in the soft soil when it thaws.

We had a great buffalo burger at Coal River Lodge. Just right. Then, before the end of the day, we crossed into the Yukon. There's about 3 hours of night now, but if it were winter, we could see the northern lights here. We attended a show about the northern lights tonight in Watson Lake at the Northern Lights Center. It's magnetic fields around the poles that cause the phenom.
From here at the Downtown RV Park in Watson Lake, population 1,500, we can walk to the grocery, the Northern Lights Center, and tomorrow the Signpost Forest. We even washed Teregram, her first wash in 4,000 miles. The last few days on patches of failing road and yesterday's rain had made her a real mess.

In Dawson Creek, we met a man driving his Model A from Iowa to Alaska. We've passed him every day, and the next day, we find out he is ahead of us when we pass him again. He goes about 40 mph. I guess we are dallying around, huh?