Carcross is cute, it's an hour from the capital city, Whitehorse Yukon. Carcross recently built about 6 or so small buildings, mostly occupied by art shops and one cozy cafe. The new plaza is across from the semi-restored frame of the SS Tutshi, but if steam boats are your thing you'll want to check out the SS Klondike.
It has a historic general store, complete with old trapping equipment. Trapping is still practiced today, but the equipment and licensing is much more humane.
Also, if you make it that far, don't miss out on Dawson City!
It's an old gold mining boomtown with dirt streets, saloons with swinging doors and dancing girls, and brothels converted into bed & breakfasts. Super cute and feels like the set of a movie, only it's "the real deal" (albeit now mining tourists). Dawson is also where Robert Service wrote much of his work, including The Cremation of Sam McGee.
My wife and I rode through on a motorcycle trip some years back. We immediately altered our itinerary to stay a few days, and I wish we could have stayed longer!
Toes have been stolen or swallowed (yup) over the years and replacements have been donated. There's now a hefty fine for anyone who wants to swallow the toe.
Where are you at, if you don't mind my asking? I'm in Sitka, and I'm always curious to see people from the far northwest on HN.
I did the Klondike relay a few times in the mid 2000s, and I really miss getting up that way. I hope to do that race again in the next few years, and to spend more time in the Yukon.
What do you do in Sitka? I've thought and still think about moving up to northern BC (Prince Rupert/Terrace) or the Yukon, but I can't square it with the lack of tech work up there...
I've been a high school math and science teacher most of my life, but I've also been a programmer on the side all my life. I few years ago I wrote a Python book that's doing well, so I'm slowly transitioning away from classroom teaching and into more technical work.
There are definitely not many programmers in small towns up here. But I'm not sure how many people are doing remote work, that's really hard to tell. It would be hard to get established in tech up here, but once you've got enough experience to work remote you can figure something out. Travel isn't cheap though, and it does take a bit longer to get most places. But living next to true wilderness is just amazing.
My contact info is in my profile if you've got any more specific questions.
You're speaking my language now. That's the dream right there. However Canada's tech market has me planted in Toronto for now.
There are some increasingly northerly-creeping companies, though. While it may not be the preferred field or quite far enough north, the work of Hinterland Games has struck me as well polished and carries a distinctly Canadian flavour:
but it looks like Hinterland Studio has moved to Vancouver. They were located in Cumberland previously which is located in Comox Valley. Damned shame. Maybe they had a hard time convincing talent to move to that area... but it would have been pretty damned near ideal for me!
Ugh, what a bummer. For me personally, I'm not young or crazy enough to work in games professionally...but I love the island (especially up-island) and would love to see its tech scene develop - and every little bit of momentum helps, so that's a blow.
There is a decent amount of stuff going in the south island, even up to Nanaimo. Tech is actually Victoria's largest industry! https://www.viatec.ca/
(by the way - it's probably at least a couple years off and might just be a pipe dream, but nevertheless I've been dreaming of some kind of hardware startup either near Nanaimo or Terrace. I took a peek at your website and saw that that might be up your alley...so if that's something you'd like to chat about feel free to drop me a line at unfactorablepolynomial at gmail)
Reminds me of Talakadu (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talakadu), a deserty patch along the Kaveri riverbank, about 130km from Bangalore. It even comes with its own legend in which a queen cursed the ruler of Mysore. The curse:
ತಲಕಾಡು ಮರಳಾಗಿ;
ಮಾಲಿಂಗಿ ಮಡುವಾಗಿ,
ಮೈಸೂರು ದೊರೆಗೆ ಮಕ್ಕಳಾಗದೆ ಹೋಗಲಿ!
Let Talakadu be filled with sand;
Let Malangi turn into a whirlpool;
Let the King of Mysore never have kids.
Coincidentally, the Mysore royal family does not have heirs born into the family to this day. For the last several generations, they have adopted an heir - who might beget a kid - but a kid born into the family has not had heirs.
The temples in Talakadu have to be constantly cleared of sand. I remember visiting as a kid and there were whole temples buried underneath the sand. I'm not sure if that charm and mystery still exists, but it certainly was a fascinating place!
It's amazing to me that the article doesn't provide a map, illustrating where Carcross is.
I knew its general location because I operate a website containing over 2000 points of interest in Canada, https://rinkatlas.com. But why not give more of a hint to people who don't know where the Yukon Territory is?
There's also Osoyos "desert" of a similar nature (that is, more of a sandy dry patch). It's 400 km to the East from Vancouver, in the Okanagan valley with its vineyards, wineries and whatnots. Wineries are quite nice; the desert - not so much :)
While I didnt live up there I lived a bit South in Eastern WA and I think the desert out there is amazing (and Eastern OR). I was hoping to get to osoyos but didn't make it and now live down in California.
If we're talking "deserts" in the sense that there is a bunch of sand and some dunes, then I'd hazard that the Desert of Maine[0] wins this contest at 600 acres smaller (.16km^2 in total) than the Carcross desert (2.6km^2 in total).
My comment was tongue-in-cheek that the Carcross isn't a desert either, and the article claiming it was the "world's smallest desert" was wrong in both size and the erroneous statement that it is a desert.
>The dry climate and strong winds in the 260-hectare area make it feel like a real desert, but the Carcross Desert is actually a series of sand dunes (which technically have too much moisture to be classified as a desert).[0]
There's also a tiny, semi-arid desert in Norway (!) of all places - Kvitsanden (The White Sands) by Røros. (62 degrees 34 minutes North, 11 degrees 22 minutes East).
Semi-arid - annual precipitation at Røros (on a highland plain, far from the sea) is some 550mm or so, but some 150-200mm or so of this comes as snow.
The 'desert' itself is approx. a square kilometer (0.4 square miles) - large enough for desert-like phenomena like shifting dunes to occur, small enough that there aren't (to my knowledge) any wildlife there which you wouldn't also find in the surrounding area.
When visiting New Zealand I was driving through Rangipo "Desert" and it gets 1500-2500mm of rain a year. Just bad soils and volcanic desolation. I live in an area where people grow crops on around 250mm of rain a year. Though a bit of bad land management and drought can turn land to sand dunes pretty fast. We probably have hundreds of smaller deserts throughout the region if semi-arid conditions and sand dunes are the membership requirements. Sorry Canada.
The article does expain how it fits the semi-arid definition as it gets 250-500mm, nowhere near 2500. Snow doesnt count, which is why antarctica is technically a dessert. Sand isnt part of the standard.
I live in a semi-arid climate (BSk) with 260mm average rainfall where they grow cereal crops. We are further to the arid end of the semi-arid classification than the desert in the article though still not technically a desert climate.
We have plants adapted to low rainfall and animals such as reptiles adapted to hot, dry conditions. You can go from crops to sand drifts to scrub and back in metres. I think I could go for a 30 minute drive, find an area of land and call it the world's smallest desert with about as much validity as the claim in the headline. The area in the article is remarkable due to its location but it seems less remarkable when compared with semi-arid areas globally.
I nominate the Perry Sandhills outside Wentworth, NSW, Australia at 0.6 square miles to be the smallest desert because it is semi-arid and has sand dunes and is only less remarkable for not being surrounded by snow.
Snow does count, although I assume it's tracked as water equivalent instead of snowfall depth (10mm of snow is generally equivalent to 1mm of rain). Antarctica gets very little precipitation, particularly on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.
:) I’ve visited this place. It’s a beautiful place and some great mountain biking nearby on Montana mountain. Keith is a really cool and showed us some of his work in progress.
Reminds me a bit of glades where I grew up in Missouri: areas where the topsoil is just a thin layer above the bedrock and can't hold much water. This creates small arid ecosystems, complete with prickly pear cactus and tarantulas. https://nature.mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/field-guide/habita...
Huh. Mere presence of sand dunes isn't an indication of any sort of "desertness", at least at this scale. Michigan has several sand dunes, and it isn't even remotely a desert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Lake_State_Park_(Michig... That one is according to Wikipedia over 2000 acres of sand dunes, which is over 3 square miles, which is quite a bit bigger than the Carcross "Desert".
There are places in that park where you can stand and see nothing but sand. Well, sand and lots of dune buggies. But, still.
Presumably a colloquial name, or there's something else to it.
Where did you get the precipitation data for those places, because the wikipedia pages for the two areas show that Carcoss[0] gets a bit less than Palo Alto[1] for example. 11 inches vs 16 inches respectively.
Same situation with most of our "high desert" here in Oregon, which is probably best described as "steppe" outside of a few small areas like the Alvord desert.
I've only ever made it to the summit of Steens. I want so, so badly to travel around, since we're not even that far away here in Bend, but ... vacation time is limited.
Nice. I wish I lived in Bend! So much amazing country to see out there. The Peter French round barn and diamond craters are also worth a stop if you are in the area.
In France there's the Dune of Pilat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_of_Pilat). It's really nice to visit. 110 meters high, right next to the coast. It's just one giant dune though :)
It has a historic general store, complete with old trapping equipment. Trapping is still practiced today, but the equipment and licensing is much more humane.
The White Pass & Yukon Route railway also ends in Carcross, as of 2007 they restored that part of the railway. https://wpyr.com/sights-sounds/places/carcross-yukon/
If anyone is considering a trip here, the website and guides at https://yukoninfo.com/ are a good resource.
There's also a small makerspace that is in the process of moving to a brand new space, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/yukonstruct-makerspace-y...
And lots of guiding places to help you get outdoors, in case you are considering a trip here :) https://www.kanoepeople.com