Carcross and Whitehorse

First, I will start by giving some information on Carcross.  Carcross is located in the Yukon territory of Canada; between Skagway, Alaska and Whitehorse, Yukon.  The town was originally named Caribou Crossing because herds of caribou crossed the rivers in the town.  The name was later shortened to Carcross.  Carcross is home of the world's smallest desert, Carcross Desert.  For more information about Carcoss please visit http://travelyukon.com/about-yukon/yukon-communities/carcross

Carcross was the first city in the Yukon that we visited.  When I got off the train, I thought that the Yukon was not as beautiful as Alaska.  The more we traveled the Yukon, I could tell I was right. However, the Yukon does have some beautiful parts.  Carcross is a really small town.  I only remember seeing a train station and a few shops. Our tour group stopped at the local general store to buy some ice cream; I got chocolate chip cookie dough.  After we finished our ice cream, we got on a bus to Whitehorse.  A few miles outside of the town, we stopped at Carcross Desert and Emerald Lake.  Carcoss desert, known as the world's smallest desert, is about one square mile.  The desert is not really a desert because the weather is too humid; the desert is actually large sand dunes left behind from the last ice age. The dunes are used for recreation activities such as sand boarding, hiking, all-terrain vehicles, cross-country skiing, and snowboarding. For more information on Carcross Desert visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcross_Desert.

The other site we saw outside of Carcross was Emerald Lake.  The lake is named so because the color of it is emerald. According to wikipedia, "the color derives from light reflecting off white deposits of marl, a
mixture of clay and calcium carbonate, at the bottom of the shallow waters.  The high concentration of calcium carbonate in the water here comes from limestone gravels eroded from the nearby mountains and deposited here 14,000 years ago by the glaciers of the last ice age. Glacial erosion was likewise responsible for scooping out the shallow lake bed" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_Lake_%28Yukon%29).  The back drop to Emerald Lake is a beautiful mountain and forest.  Emerald Lake is my favorite lake because it is blue with emerald swirled throughout.  After visiting the desert and lake, we got back on the bus and traveled to Whitehorse.

Whitehorse is the capital of the Yukon, and my least favorite city in the Yukon.  In Whitehorse, we took a tour of the town and visited a farm where we saw bison, water buffalo, mule deer, caribou, dahl sheep, moose, and musk ox.  The bus driver/tour guide was really rude.  He did not know much about the town and he talked down to everyone on the tour.  At night, we went to a show called Frantic Follies.  The show was a musical about the Yukon. The next day we traveled to Dawson City.

 Carcoss Desert

 Emerald Lake

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