I basically had a private room here for all except one night. Turns out most people who are traveling and using the hostel are either single guys (like those motorcyclists I talked with earlier), or families, so if you ask for a "female only" dorm room, the chances are you're not going to have company.
For one person, it's pretty much cost effective to stay at the hostel rather than getting a campsite, since the campground is just slightly cheaper. Plus... amenities, just look!
I also freeze water in my water bottles for ice, which is another bonus!
 |
| This is the hostel kitchen! |
 |
| This is the sunroom, which I turned into my private office. |
 |
| Here is the common area: dining room and entertainment area. |
 |
| And here I am working, with my trusty new mobile printer and laptop. |
 |
| Dinner on the deck didn't last long because of yellow jackets! |
Lauren went to university in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she majored in art, so we had to talk a little bit about that! I asked if she did the quilts on the walls, but it was her grandmother who was responsible for them! They are quite lovely, and make the place feel like home.
They are putting a lot of money into the place, and I hope they make a go of it. It's quite a lovely facility. I'd for sure go back, especially since I feel like I have friends here now! Plus, open year round!
The only thing that was unpleasant about staying here were the yellow jackets.
Mary commented that they were unusually bad this year; no one knows why. They seem to like swarming around new cars that drive in because there are so many dead, tasty bugs on the windshields that evidently provided a lot of food for them! They never were vicious, just annoying, but enough so that I beat a hastry retreat when trying to eat dinner outside. Breakfast was fine, I think because it was shady and they weren't up yet.
 |
| The Takhini Hot Springs pool |
I had a few last things to do in Whitehorse before heading on: my car needed it's service, and I wanted to go to the Berengia Interpretive Center, which I had heard was the best museum in Whitehorse.
 |
| Mammoth at the Berengia Center |
Berengia Interpretive Center
Service was quickly taken care of by the nice folks at the Whitehorse Toyota dealer. I also learned how to turn off the annoying "maintenance required" notification (trip counter, hold down, turn off and back on again).So... Berengia. You hear about it everywhere here. It was the "mammoth steppe" — the cold, dry plain of northwestern North American and northeastern Asia.
As you go in, there is a big globe that shows what the land masses of the Earth looked like at the height of the Ice Ages, when so much water was locked up in the glaciers and ice caps.
I had not realized that the "land bridge" was so wide. I had been under the misapprehension that it was just along the Aleutian Island chain. In reality, it is the continental shelves that became exposed during these times, not the deep waters around the Aleutians. This makes it easier to understand how easy it was for animals — including humans — to cross east to west and vice-ersa.
I learned so much. Turns out that I essentially had a private tour, since no one else opted for it. The intern who gave the tour was GREAT. She had supplemental information on her iPad, and answered every single question I threw at her. Her specialty at university was "infectious and ancient diseases" which is a pretty fascinating field of study. She explained a lot about the fossils they had on exhibit and how they could tell, within a pretty good degree of certainty, how the animals had died. There were several that I had not heard of: including the "short-faced bear" (bigger than a grizzly, but probably a scavenger, not a predator).
Berengia — the ice-free land of North America and Asia — WAS NOT GLACIATED. It's still hard to understand how a place could be cold, but have not glaciers or permanent ice, but it takes precipitation to make snow, and snow has to accumulate to make ice. The weather patterns were such that did not happen. So it was cold and dry
Animals did move both ways. Many of them became extinct when the climate changed. Camels are native to the Americas, migrated east to Asia and south to South America, developing into vicuñas, llamas and alpacas. Horses, too, migrated to Asia and became extinct in the Americas; they were later re-introduced by the Spanish explorers. Bison, bears and musk ox have all survived across the land bridge.
The question of how people populated North America is still quite hotly debated, and it probably will only become clearer as more site and artifacts are found. There is an intensely studied site called the "Bluefish Caves" where there is evidence of old worked mammoth bone and cut bones dating to OVER 20,000 years old. This is far older than anything else on the continent.
— current 2017 "Archaeology" article on dating Bluefish Cave artifacts
There is some thought that it was more by BOAT that northern people came into North America. "We know they had boats," she said, and they think primitive people explored along the coastline and actually worked their way inland and north, or south, perhaps in the warmer interglacial periods.
It's all quite fascinating, and new information is always coming to light. I asked about underwater archaeology, since it seems that some of the sites may actually be underwater, and she said, yes, they are looking at that in the Bering and Beaufort Seas.
There was a also a fellow (another "Dave") from Santa Rosa!! He is their climate specialist, and he had a few choice things to say about our current administration. There is no argument about the causes of climate change here in Canada. Permafrost is melting, winters are warmer, animals (like mule deer) are expanding their range and moving north, if they can. For others, like the polar bear, their habitat is shrinking.
And... the Northwest Passage, long the quest of explorers, is open.
Finally, what fun, there was an atlatl demonstration and we all got to throw darts at some plywood cutouts of animals. Nobody hit anything, but it's a pretty amazing piece of early technology. One does wonder how someone long ago figured out how to extend one's throwing range.
Since it had gotten late, I decided to stay just one more day, and get my free Starbucks beverage for my birthday. Besides, I'm just loath to leave, and I didn't want to head out of town on a Friday night. I know itt's time to go, but I just don't want to move south. I'm just enjoying being as far north as I can for as long as I can. The days are shortening, but they are still lovely and long up here, and the good weather is just encouraging me to stay and enjoy.
 |
| Sculpture at the Berengia Center |
No comments:
Post a Comment