Haines Junction

Haines Junction, a thriving community of around 500, is the place to stay if you're planning to hike in Kluane National Park. The Visitor Centre (once again) is ready, willing and able to provide you with as much information as you could use in several lifetimes about the park and the area. To our dismay, we landed in HJ exactly 1 day before pretty much everything shut down for the season.

Kluane is a wilderness park, which goes a long way to explain why the hikes are either short and suitable to Uilleam and other geriatrics or multi-day efforts attractive mostly to the young, robust and distinctly non-geriatric set. We visited the Parks Canada visitor centre at Sheep Mountain (Tachal Dhal) which boasts the highest concentration of mountain sheep in the world. They're interesting beasts: both male and female have horns, albeit different styles. They live really high on the sides of the mountains where not very much grows but apparently prefer to be able to see everything over having a lot more food available. I took a photo with the longest lens I have. Those little white dots? Sheep....

You can find a lot better images at https://www.google.ca/search?q=mountain+sheep+image&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=fuEnUpLYOozbiwKv1oDQDA&ved=0CCoQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=475

The town itself boasts a fabulous bakery (cinnamon buns par excellence, great specialty breads, etc.) which is currently up for sale if anyone's contemplating a career change. There's also some interesting architecture:

The Anglican church was built by a local log builder and houses a shop in the basement which sells the work of regional artists (quilters, visual artists, etc.) Most artists donate 10% of the revenue from the shop back to the church, tho' there is no requirement to do so. One corner of the basement is a thrift shop and the money raised through this avenue goes to church maintenance and operational costs.




The Catholic church down the street was built in 1954 by Father Morriset, the first RC priest to operate in the area. Resources being scarce, he got creative and converted an old American Army quonset hut into the church you see here. It has the distinction of being the most photographed church in the Yukon.

I'm pretty sure this isn't the manse.....

...but you never know.