The best time to see the Aurora Borealis are from September to March, but better yet is from November to February when it's darker for much longer in the day. We decided we'd make a weekend trip up to Whitehorse early December. With it being our first time visiting, we found a local tour that would include our hotel stay, pick us up from the airport, give us 2 nights of viewing, and an optional other day time tour, which we selected as the city tour. The week leading into our trip the weather forecast was looking very favourable with no snow in the forecast for at least one evening that would have provided us a higher chance of seeing the beautiful lights dancing across the sky. As we approached the chosen weekend though the weather forecast started to change with snow started appearing in the forecast and this would dim our chances of seeing the northern lights because with snow comes clouds.
Either way we were all booked, warm winter clothes packed, and so we took the 2ish hour flight north and arrived in freezing Whitehorse. With a population of just over 25,000 Whitehorse is a fairly well populated small northern city and has a lot of outdoor activities to offer. As part of our tour, we were staying in downtown Whitehorse at the Best Western Gold Rush Inn, a quaint little hotel with a great bar/restaurant attached to it. After settling in, we had a few hours to kill before our first night tour which started at 10pm, so we wandered the town a bit and found a cozy neighbourhood pub called Dirty Northern where we dined on a couple bison burgers for supper. In a small town it's easy to spot the tourist and so we did have a few glances thrown our way when we entered. The food was delicious and the atmosphere was nice. By the time we finished supper, most shops were closed so we made our way back to the hotel to rest up a bit before our tour.
The tour picked us up at the hotel and there was quite a group gathered when we showed up. There were 4 vans heading out that night. The other guests on our van were either from back east, the US, Japan, or Mexico. We drove about 30 minutes outside the city to a farm that has partnered with the tour group. They have warming huts, for obvious reasons, an outdoor pit fire for roasting marshmallows and just sitting around, and a couple outhouses. The warming hut was stocked with games to play, plenty of benches and chairs, coffee, tea, hot chocolate and snacks and was a great place to sit want wait for a clearing in the sky to see if the northern lights could be spotted. If lucky, there is also a very large open field where you could go to watch the northern lights and take photos. The tour runs until 2am when they get you back to the hotel. The first night it snowed the enter time we were there and it was just bad luck. For most of the other guests this was their first experience with snow. Staying up until 2am really messes with you the next day especially when you know your city tour starts at 10am. While we had a good sleep, it really wasn't enough before we had to get up so we could have breakfast before the city tour. We found a cool cafe called Baked-Cafe & Bakery just a few blocks down from the hotel and enjoyed a nice quick breakfast there.
The city tour, thankfully involved us being on a bus and getting out at the various stops. Otherwise I think I would have froze it was so cold. Despite having my winter gear and layers it was still very COLD!! The city tour gave us a nice introduction to some of the town sites and history of Whitehorse and the Klondike gold rush which really shaped the Yukon and contributed to the building of the railway and the Alaskan Highway connecting the north with Alaska and BC. After our city tour we decided to stroll around downtown and do a bit of shopping in the local gifts shops. It snowed throughout the entire day and gave little hope of the skies clearing up and so we made the decision to not head out that night for the second night of viewing opportunity. In part what led us to skip this evening was we were both still recovering from the night before and we had booked a private photo 3 hours tour the next morning at the Wildlife Preserve and then were heading home so we thought it better to get a good night's sleep so we could better enjoy the wildlife preserve. We'll never know if the northern lights were visible or not, but it was probably the right call. The next morning, we had breakfast as the hotel restaurant and got to take in the first 20 minutes of Canada's match against Croatia in the men's World Cup. We scored a beautiful early game, but then things went downhill from there and we lost the match effectively eliminating us from the tournament.
The Yukon Wildlife Preserve is located about 30 minutes out of Whitehorse so we took a taxi there as we didn't have any other transportation. Because we booked a private tour, we were also invited to arrive before the park opens so we could get an early start. Situated on over 350 acres of natural landscape for the animals that reside here, you can enjoy the park year round either through a self guided 5km loop walk or via tour. Our guide took us around in a van and we stopped at the various animal habitats so we could take pictures up close. For a few of the animals, we also got to go inside the fenced area for a real up close experience. We got to do this with the deer, the lynx, and the arctic fox. For both the lynx and fox pens our guide also demonstrated a feeding and we got to see the lynx jump up and retrieve its chicken supper. The little arctic fox was quite the ball of energy, running around her enclosure it was at times hard to keep track of where she was. Our guide placed a small bowl of food out right in front of me and she came right up to it and grabbed her food before running off to hide it for later. This was quite the experience to see their wild animals up close in natural surroundings. Also at the preserve are bison, moose, caribou, thinhorn sheep, mountain goats, and elk. It really was a neat experience to see all these different types of wild animals who were brought to the preserve either due to injury or having been orphaned. 
After our wildlife preserve tour, we had few hours to kill before heading back to the airport for our flight home. The Whitehorse airport is tiny and we were one of only three flights leaving that evening. The airport is so tiny that even the airport security didn't open until only 1 hour before our flight was scheduled to leave.
Having missed seeing the northern lights, we'll have to plan a trip back perhaps a few weeks earlier before the weather has guaranteed snow.
To travel is to live....until next time, life is good!
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