{"id":10469,"date":"2023-07-11T06:00:50","date_gmt":"2023-07-11T13:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/?p=10469"},"modified":"2023-07-11T09:51:30","modified_gmt":"2023-07-11T16:51:30","slug":"congdon-creek-campground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/2023\/07\/11\/congdon-creek-campground\/","title":{"rendered":"Congdon Creek Campground"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We decided to skip Pine Lake Campground and \"\"<\/a>instead head for Congdon Creek Campground, another Yukon Provincial Park about an hour further along our route toward Alaska.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>It turned out it was a great choice!\u00a0\u00a0 We got there and what I thought was the best site was in the process of being taken when we arrived.\u00a0 We had to wait for those folks to detach their car so he could back up and pull into the site as we could not get past them.\u00a0 If only we hadn’t stopped at a rest area, that coach wouldn’t have passed us and gotten there first.\u00a0\u00a0 But later we figured out it really wasn’t the best site.\u00a0 Turns out we got the best site in the campground (#9)\u00a0 But I will get to that later on..<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I saw Campsite 9 and it looked good to me, so I needed to turn around and pull into it.\u00a0 But at the end of \"\"<\/a>the sites, the turnaround was about 5 feet short of allowing that, so I had to detach the car to get back out of there.\u00a0 I then pulled the bus into the site so we were facing the lake.<\/p>\n

The folks in the site left us a stack of “split” firewood which was nice of them.\u00a0 Yukon Government sites offer free firewood in large bins around the campgrounds but they aren’t split yet.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We set up our chairs and reveled in the warmth of the sun right then.\u00a0 Later on we brought them down to the \"\"<\/a>water’s edge and it wasn’t long before the sun went behind a cloud and it got cold pretty fast!\u00a0 Luckily the clouds moved and it came back out a little bit later.\u00a0 The wind here was really icy cold!\u00a0 But what a beautiful place.\u00a0 God’s handiwork for sure.<\/p>\n

This campground, like most other Provincial parks in Canada, is dry camping.\u00a0 There were no utilities or dump station at almost all that we have been to in the past.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>As we were only here for two nights, the following morning we drove over to the Soldier Summit \"\"<\/a>Trailhead to hike to the original Alcan route where the opening ceremonies occurred on November 20th, 1942.\u00a0 I cannot imagine how cold it would have been out here on that date.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It was an easy hike, less than a mile and only about 300′ in elevation change, but the mosquitos were horrendous!\u00a0 \u00a0There were American \"\"<\/a>and Canadian flags along with a large wooden platform with signs about that historic event and subsequent events, like the 50th anniversary back in ’92.\u00a0 No mention of the 75th anniversary though.\u00a0 This is grizzly country, so we all had our bear spray, and all were probably wondering the same thing as I was:\u00a0 will it help in the event a grizzly wanted to get up close and personal?\u00a0 And to our surprise there were the classic Parks Canada Red Adirondack chairs at the top!\u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Here is a pic of our traveling companions at the top of the hill.\u00a0\u00a0 After an uneventful hike, we drove over to the visitor center, which was pretty small.\u00a0 And while we were there, we watched some Dahl Sheep way up on the mountainside thru telescopes positioned around the building.\u00a0\u00a0 As we were heading back to the car, we saw a motorhome stop on the roadway, about half a mile from us, where a bunch of sheep were crossing the highway.\u00a0\u00a0 By the time we got over there, the sheep were about 40 feet up the cliff wall, somehow clinging to the side.\u00a0 It sure would have been nice to see how they got up there, but we missed it.\u00a0\u00a0 And my pictures of the cliff face somehow didn’t include the actual sheep of which there were about 8 of, a couple were very young.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>If that wasn’t enough animal sightings for the day, about 8 miles down the road toward our campground we spotted a grizzly on the side of the road eating the shrubs.\u00a0 Turned out it was a mamma and a cub.\u00a0 As we watched, they wandered down the road toward us.\u00a0 To our excitement, they crossed the road right in front of our car!!\u00a0 I got a great shot of the cub looking at us, but the mamma bear never looked our way.\u00a0\u00a0 It was funny, no one got out of their cars to get a closer look :).\u00a0 Apparently, not everyone is stupid…<\/p>\n

After the bears crossed and headed into the tall stuff, we drove the couple miles to our campground,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I know I was thinking how wonderful it was we hadn’t encountered them on the trail a few minutes prior.<\/p>\n

The following morning as we got ready to move a guy walked up and asked if we were leaving.\u00a0 I told him yes.\u00a0 He then told me this was the best site in the campground and that he lives in Whitehorse and comes here many times a year.<\/p>\n

A bit later we drove to Discovery Yukon Lodgings less than two hours away according to google maps, but the drive was so rough it took us 4 hours to get there.\u00a0 Yikes!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We decided to skip Pine Lake Campground and instead head for Congdon Creek Campground, another Yukon Provincial Park about an hour further along our route toward Alaska. It turned out it was a great choice!\u00a0\u00a0 We got there and what I thought was the best site was in the process of being taken when we … <\/p>\n

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