The trip was quite an adventure. I made it here safe and sound and had many an adventure along the way. First things first, you have to see our noble chariot. Lovingly nicknamed the 'Screaming Indian' we drove a 1997 Prius 2300 miles with a Canoe on top.
On the first day I began traveling at 6:30 am and made it to my first stop at 11:45 pm. So needless to say, it was a very long day. Customs was a weird experience though. As we're pulling in we see a van from Chihuahua Mexico in front of us. He gets pulled in for questioning, which was funny... until we got pulled in with him. So they questioned us to make sure we weren't bringing in drugs and whatnot. The whole time they're yelling at this Mexican guy who couldn't really speak English. Eventually they let us go and we never really saw what happened to the Mexican. But as we were pulling away, in the midst of a blizzard, we heard knocking on our roof. Jared turns to me and asks "Did the Mexican climb up under our Canoe?" It turned out it was just a shirt flapping in the wind. I was pretty disappointed. Anyway, back to the story. So it took three hours to go 30 miles due to a blizzard. We ended up riding the rumble strips to make it through. Quite an adventure.
The next day we left at 6:00 am and made our way through yet another blizzard. We passed dozens of gutter balled cars. We got behind a semi and were able to push through. We arrived in White Court where we were going to stay with Evan. There, we got to go on a tour of the paper mill. At first I thought it'd be incredibly boring. Surprisingly, it was pretty interesting.
So below a few pictures from the paper mill.
Afterwards, we went to Evan's house. He lives on 160 acres with his family.
Basically while we were there we just walked around and looked at his land. I'm jealous. I want my own river someday...
The next day we drove for twelve hours to Laird Hot Springs. We got there thinking we
wouldn't have to pay. We were wrong. Which stunk for us because we didn't have any cash.
The manager of the campsite was a cool guy, so he marked us as Seniors from BC. Laird is a hot
spring which feeds into a river. So it's this incredible place off in the middle of nowhere.
We hung out in Laird for several hours. Then we went to sleep. Now the tale I'm about to
tell you is rather confusing. I'm not a superstitious person, nor do I believe in ghosts per se.
That said, i'll tell you what happened.
I was sound asleep during the four hours of darkness that we enjoy in the far north. When at
about one in the morning I was jerked from my sleep by screaming. When I say screaming, I
don't mean screaming like what people do. If you have ever heard a cougar or a horse scream
then you have an idea of how terrifying that can be. This scream was followed by an air horn
and accompanied by the hurried sound of feet running through our camp. The weird thing is
that we didn't see any flash lights or hear anyone else responding to it. We thought that maybe
there was a bear in camp and they were trying to scare it off. Then as suddenly as it started, it
stopped. Then a half hour later the screaming started again. This time it was closer and
sounded like a different language. After a few minutes it was just a few feet away from us.
There was the sound of footsteps all around our camp and hushed whispers between the
screams. Soon they began screaming two different names. One would scream "DANA!" Then
a second later from the other side of the camp someone would scream "JAMIE!"
So Jared pipes up and asks "Hey, what's going on?" A guys voice pipes up and says
"We lost our sister." Jared then asks, "Do you need help finding her?" No reply. Jared then
gets his flash light and climbs out of the tent. Where, despite the sounds of foot steps, there is
no one there. Further more, there are no flashlights anywhere in the camp and no one else is
reacting to the screaming. This includes a yappy dog that was in the next camp that barked at
everything. So needless to say we're a little creeped out. Jared then walks down and sees an
Indian woman sitting on a rock in the dark smoking a pipe. He asks if she's ok. She says "I told
them I was going for a walk." At this point she looks up at Jared who claims that she didn't have
any eyes. He began backing away and came back to the camp as quickly as possible.
Now, I didn't see her. I can't verify a lack of eyes but the sound of her voice wasn't natural.
Two figures then came out of the woods got her and then disappeared back into the darkness.
At this point Jared and I are frantically packing and trying to get out of there.
It was very clear that whatever was going on, it wasn't good. The spirit very clearly
prompted both of us that we needed to get out. I don't know what happened, nor do I really
want to know, but Jared has this to say about it. "Natives are creepy. Next time, we stay in
the tent until we hear chain saws. Then we run."
parking lot until the place opened. At this point we were in Watson Lake Yukon. This is the
day that we saw all the wild life.
We then pushed on until we got to Skagway where we were welcomed with a heroes welcome. It was nice to finally get there. Now I walk
out my front door and I see the beauty of skagway. This is what I see from my front porch.
I think this is what heaven looks like.Anyway, I miss you and love you all.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures.
Love,
Mark
