I am taking an easy morning at Kluane lake. To change things up a little I have my beloved potatoe mash as my first breakfast before I hit the road around 11AM. It's rainy and the beautiful mountains are caught in the clouds. I almost forgot about this kind of weather. It's fine. I am super happy about the week of good weather. Also, it's only 65km to Haines Junction, where I want to make a break to suck up some free wifi to organize a place to stay for Whitehorse and go on another hike.

I reach Haines Junction rather quickly and settle down in a nice bakery, where I have coffee, hot cinnamon buns and wifi. Against my expectation Haines Junction [Junction of Alaska Highway and road to Haines in the southern part of Alaska] is a rather nice town I must admit.

I reckon I haven't written much about the towns/villages I pass through. To be honest the towns in Alaska [there weren't many and let's take out Valdez from this] that I went through were all more or less a loose agglomeration of houses. I would also rather often pass ghost towns/houses in the middle of nowhere. In these vast landscapes there is apperently nobody sees the need to clean up these places. Nature will take over eventually.

Haines Junction at the foothills of Canada's largest mountains seems different to me. There are nicely located benches all around, which I like the most and fuel my imagination that summertime must be beautiful here.

Speaking of summertime, I check the weather forecast. I almost can't believe it. - 9 degrees tonight, -11 Monday night [it's on the edge of my sleeping comfort]. I am pretty sure it must be a mistake, nonetheless it somewhat fits into the picture what many people have told me over the course of the last weeks: "winter weather can happen anytime from now". It is not necessarily there to stay but still, if I can escape it, I will.

I skip the hike, finish my cinnamon bun and off I am towards Whitehorse, another 160km. I want to roughly map out my route through Canada there [south, quickly!] by taking in some recommendations of the locals. Unfortunately I still don't have a place to stay, but let's see tomorrow. I leave the Elias range in the rear mirror and with 130km left I pitch my tent close to Otter Falls hoping for a rather mild night.