Sunday 7/26/98
Day 4: Nahanni Range Rd., Yukon to Atlin, BC
We woke up to a nice sunrise and blue sky at 5:00 am as we left Richard and Gretta's cabin on the Nahanni Range Road. 
We saw a black bear on the road at about 5:05 am. It continued to run along the road for about a 1/4 mile before finally running into the woods. We had also seen fresh bear prints along a river that we had stopped at yesterday and we were glad we didn't spend the night there. The scenery was just as nice going back and it is so quiet driving along these roads as there was no traffic. No signs of life except animals and a couple houses. No logging has occured and the water is clean and not been tampered with. There aren't many places like this and it was worth the drive out here even if we did know that the bridge had been washed out.
We came out to the Campbell Highway at 7:00 am. We were going to go north and try the Canol Road, but realized that we needed gas which required going back to Watson Lake. We took a side road to the Sa Dena Hes Mine, but turned around after a few miles. 
We got gas in Watson Lake and decided to take the Alaska Highway instead of going north through the Yukon. At 10:00 am we stopped at the Rancheria Falls. Took a 15 minute walk on a boardwalk to the falls. We stopped at Morley Lake for lunch. Continued on to the small town of Teslin. This is a small Indian community along the water. We went to the George Johnston Museum ($2.50 adults and $1 for children). George was a Tlinglit Indian who took lots of photographs and was the first person in the area to own a car. The car was on display (on-loan from the auto dealer who he had sold it back to, good as new). He used this car as a taxi in the summer and for hunting on the frozen lake in the winter. Each winter he painted it white and then painted it another color every summer. Needless to say the dealer when trying to restore the car, had a difficult time figuring out what the original color was. We got gas at Johnson's Crossing at 1:45 pm.
We decided to take Highway 6 (Canol Road) north toward Ross River. The scenery was boring and after an hour we turned around. At 3:15 we were back on the Alaskan Highway and headed west. We stopped at Little Atlin Creek and then drove into Jake's Corner. There is an interesting gift shop/restaurant/bar/museum all on the second floor of the one major building in this community. Outside there are several outboard motors, lined up like mailboxes. As you walk in the door there is a collection of old typewriters and other office machines. Upstairs you are first greeted by some caged birds. There is a combination gift shop, restaurant and bar on this floor. Downstairs is a daycare.
We decided to take the Atlin Road and hopefully camp somewhere in the area. We stopped at lots of possible places. Snafu Lake was too busy. 
Tarfu Lake had a couple places we could have pulled over and camped. Just south of Tarfu were a couple more good sites. We hit some road construction on our way south to Atlin. We took the Ruffner Mine Road. This went past two lakes with no road access. We turned around when it started getting muddy.
We got into Atlin at 6:15. It was overcast. We stopped at a restaurant but they were too busy. 
We decided to drive out to Warm Springs via Discovery Road. We turned on to the Warm Bay Road and continued past Pine Creek Campground, McKee Creek, Palmer Lake and the Warm Springs Campground. The actual Warm Springs were just a little ways more on the left in an open field. A few campers were there, but we didn't see any people around. These springs are warm, meaning about 75'. We continued on the Grotto Campground and the Grotto Creek. We turned around here and went back into town. Both the Pine Creek Campground and Grotto Campground are owned by the city. They charge $5 a night and you can put your money in the designated jar at any business in town. We went back to the ?????? Restaurant for dinner. The service was good, but the food was not. They had very few customers when we came back. The waittress said they had a lot more tourists here this summer than usual. She said that some person or group had bought all the available land, to keep the area from being too buildt up.
After dinner we went to the pioneer cemetery. This is an old cemetery with mostly wooden grave markers. A lot of the people buried here were born in England. 
One was from Japan, another from Sweden and even one from Tacoma, WA. Two men were buried with airplane props on their graves. Some of the deaths were from drowning in the ocean. One had been shot, mistaken for a bear. On the way to Discovery, an old mining ghosttown, we found another cemetery on a hill overlooking the lake. We drove past Pine Creek Falls and an active placer mine. We found the ghosttown of Discovery, which amounted to a couple of small buildings. 
There lots of trailings from the mining. We drove across the Surprise Lake Dam, which was pretty little compared to most of the dams we had seen. Driving up the hill we found a nice campsite to spend the night at about 10:30 pm. Walking down the hill, there was another campsite right on the lake. Across the lake was an