Day Six: Whitehorse to Watson Lake, YT

Highlights from Sunday, July 27:

• Kiersten is...a little wild today, to put it mildly. We take her to the 9 a.m. Mass and she begins misbehaving immediately. We're unable to enjoy services at all and have to confine her to the crying room. She misbehaves except for maybe the last 10 minutes of Mass. She tends to act odd when she's not at her home parish, so we suspect that she doesn't recognize other churches as "her" church. Maybe she's feeling liberated since we normally have her strapped into a carseat for 6 hours at a time. Maybe she's just a normal two-year old.
  
• We head back to the hotel and finish packing up our things. We then head to the Real Canadian Superstore to buy some food for lunch and dinner. (Dinner in particular is critical--we recall that Watson Lake has lousy restaurants.) On the way, Christina is surprised at how much modern stuff is in Whitehorse--it has Starbucks, Wal-Mart, and a bunch of other Canadian brand-name stores. Whitehorse does have 20,000 people, and it's a large tourist spot, so maybe we shouldn't be surprised.
  
• We stop at Whitehorse's Beringia Museum. It's an exhibit hall dedicated to ice age relics and fossils found in the Alaska-Yukon region. They've got a full Woolly Mammoth skeleton, and skeletons from other animals as well. It's a small museum, but its quality is on par with what you'd see at the Smithsonian.
• Kiersten largely enjoys the museum, but it's close to her nap time and she starts acting punch drunk. Everything is funny to her, and she's running around in circles screaming. After several time outs, we put her down for her nap and hit the road. Christina also takes a nap for a few hours while I drive for awhile.
• This stretch of highway actually weaves between the Yukon Territory and British Columbia, so we're all over the map today.
• Kiersten is somewhat well-behaved after her nap, although she's still addicted to her Disney CDs. How many times will we hear "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" on this trip? The sound of it is really quite atrocious...
• After having dinner on the road, we arrive at Watson Lake in the early evening. We're staying in the Air Force Lodge, which is completely unconnected with the U.S. Air Force. It's a wonderful hotel which was apparently used by the U.S. Army Air Corps back in World War II. Today, it's run by a very nice German couple who actually remember us from our stay two years ago. It's honestly the nicest hotel in Watson Lake, and believe me, the other hotels are not much to look at. We're quite comfortable in this place.
  
• We take Kiersten for a little walk to get some energy out of her. The lodge owners have horses in the back, so she enjoys a good look at them. Unfortunately, she's still not ready to go to bed, and we have a hard time getting her to go down. She finally goes out by 11, and unfortunately, we haven't gotten any packing done. We're going to be scrambling tomorrow...
• Results: Nice lodging at both ends, and a nice museum in the middle. However, Kiersten's behavior needs significant improvement. Either she sees a child psychologist, or we'll need to go to an adult one....(Just kidding, we still love her.) Grade: C.

Distance traveled to date: 1,412 miles.