We were approaching Watson Lake. The closer we got to this 790-resident town, the stranger the sky began to look. Dark orange-colored clouds blocked the view to the sun of which there was nothing left but a small red ball hanging strangly in the sky. Were we witnessing a rare natural phenomenon? Surely we thought of forest fires, but we did not smell fire odor. Later, when we inquired at the Visitor Center in Watson, it turned out that there was indeed a fire more than 100 kilometers away. This did not cause any panic. It was an annual thing. Around September, it will stop again by itself.
Watson Lake, by the way, houses the second highlight of the trip along the Alaska Highway. During the construction of the highway an American soldier got homesick for his native soil and, as a consolation, hammered a nameplate of his city onto a tree. Nothing crazy in itself, but since then this has taken on a life of its own, eventually resulting in a ‘forest of signs’ of more than 80,000 signs that are carried here by travelers. It put Watson Lake on the tourist map forever.