Day #2 ALCAN trip

We slept about an hour late, ate a good breakfast, took some pictures and then headed out again.  We saw the largest gold pan in the World at Burwash Landing.  An interpretive exhibit of fire damage caused the kids to run around yelling "the fire is coming, the fire is coming" so I figured since nobody around would know me, I could do the same.  It felt good to cut loose and scream and run in a circle, and then load up fast and take off before somebody got my tag number.  We let the kids watch movies and they really did a wonderful job this whole trip. They are a little wild in public, going into the hotel and restaraunt, but I'm trying to be a little more understanding.  But, that said, I think if I hear the joke "knock, knock, who's there, orange..." again I just might scream.  Driving through White Horse we were surprised when our cell phones made noise alerting us that we had service.  There was a mad scramble for the console to pick up our phones and call somebody, anybody, with a status update.  Not all calls & texts went through initially so between us both, we probably sent 5 people the same text 5 times but at least somebody somewhere would know where we were.  Our plan was to stop there and look for some collector t-shirts for all the grandbabies that said "yukon" but we ended up talking on the phones while we breezed right through the 10 min span of town (the biggest city we had seen in two days), until we lost service and then realized that we had just blown through White Horse.  Momma scrambled for the Milepost to see where our next gift shop would be and over the next 150 miles we would drive disappointedly past one "closed for the season" gift shop after another.  Some of the places looked like ghost towns and some were just closed for the day at 5pm.  The most beautiful lake I have ever seen is just east of White Horse.  It is called Marsh Lake and is absolutely turquoise and the shores are cobble.  I would drive all the way back here with our boat just to explore it.  it was around there that I stopped to take pictures of the clouds; they looked like a large flat brush smeared stark white paint in a semi-circle on top of a bright blue canvas.  I have never seen clouds like that.  Every so often there were signs advising traffic to slow down and watch for school bus stops.  We kept looking for bus stops, driveways, schools, or anything that might show signs of civilization but they weren't apparent.  After the second or third of those it became something we would really laugh at.  Where is any school? any kids? any houses? any bus stops?  When we finally made it to Watson Lake (about 20 miles shy of our goal) we decided to stop because with the lack of cell service since Tok, we really wanted to find wifi so we could get online and email some updates.  Our priority was a room with free wifi so we got in, logged on the net, and then headed out to get pullups (one of those forgotten things that really couldn't remain forgotten if we wanted to sleep easy) and supper, but at 8pm both of the restaraunts (and one grocery store) were closed except at our hotel.  That might have been The Best BLT and onion rings I ever ate in my life.  We lost an hour coming into the Yukon and I just refuse to get onto another time zone.  My phone updated itself, my car didn't, my computer doesn't know what to do, my husband is an hour behind me, daddy is two hours ahead, and my employer is three hours ahead (but yesterday was four) ... i need a secretary to follow me around with an arm full of watches.  I need to end this.  We are trying to get up tomorrow and be at the Signpost Forest around daybreak, so we can explore Liard Hot Springs and find some t-shirts for the grandbabies, and get to our next stop before everything closes.  All total today we drove from Burwash Landing to Watson Lake - around 417 miles.  There is always a discrepancy between the road signs that say how far away something is (even after i convert km to miles), and the mile markers, and my actual odometer readings so I'm just recording mileage off my odometer at the end of the day.