A Drive Into the Wild.

The drive to Keno, Yukon for the wedding was a 5 to 6 hour drive north of Whitehorse and into the wild.  Fortunately, Google maps or our iPhones weren’t telling the truth when they said that the trip would be somewhere between 11 and 13 hours. Obviously, that MUST have been in the winter.  And you'd never get to Keno using an iPhone map anyway.  We spent the better part of three days completely out of cell service, relying on the same wits by which our ancient fore-bearers first arrived—road maps, books and good old-fashioned conversation.   Except they likely didn’t have as sophisticated paper maps, visitor guides filled with swaths of information, or car-dancing to satellite radio.

But the drive up there was very lovely and scenic with rolling hills, scattered with a distant poignant peak, ample scraggly trees and stretching lakes.  The roads were edged with vibrant purple fireweed and wild pink roses. There were a few really decent places for food in towns along the way, including a renown bakery with massive cinnamon buns as big as your head.  (We even stopped on our way back in Mayo for an arts & crafts fair with beautiful locally made jewelry and felts).

We arrived many tired hours later in the dusty little community of Keno. Population: 20.  Maintained by the nine mountain men and women who live there full-time.  The wedding guests easily quadrupled it, filling up rented cabins, bunkhouses at the motel and the campground.  Keno has one snackbar/pizzeria/restaurant and it's downtown "core" is filled with a number of museums housing artifacts from the mining days, a Laundromat/post office that has the main shower in town, a library (that actually has books), a saloon called the Sourdough Saloon and a hotel that is really now more of open room used for the wedding venue and an upstairs show-room of a hotel that no longer functions as one. There is no gas station and you pretty much have to bring everything as if you are camping in the wilderness (which I guess we were) including drinking water.  It is literally the end of the road.

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