Here we are, on the road: On the road to Alaska

6/15/09 Both of us worked on this report

We are staying in Whitehorse, Yukon for a few days. I can’t get good enough internet service to post this so I will post it when I can.

We stayed in Dawson Creek for two days. The first night we all went to a all you can eat fish place and three folks had trouble that night, maybe not such a good idea, huh. The next day we did a bit of sight seeing and replenishing at Wal Mart.

The second night we had a pot luck type dinner, Lorraine cooked a large pork roast, Vicky had a large meat loaf and mashed potatoes, Norma brought a desert. I’m probably in trouble here but I don’t know who supplied what beyond that but I do know there was lots of stuff and no one went away hungry. After dinner, Mark made a rock guard for me to put between the coach and the car using PVC pipe and landscaping material.

The RV park we stayed at was nice but the site we had didn’t have very good electrical service, it kept surging high and low so bad our surge protector would trip. It was worse at night when everyone was using a lot of power, probably they don’t have large enough wires to support the load. But my thinking is this will not be the worst power supply we see before we get back to the lower 48 later this summer.

After leaving Dawson Creek we headed for Fort Nelson. Our original plans had us dry camping at the IGA grocery store parking lot, however, the parking lot was too small and dusty. Mark/Sue had traveled ahead of us and they found a campground on the edge of town that would easily accommodate all of us. I called him on his cell and he told us where they were camped and we headed to the edge of town. About two blocks before getting there we were stopped at a police roadblock, they were turning everyone back because the Alaska Highway was closed ahead due to the wildfire. They did let us go to the campground where our group talked about staying for a couple of days due to the fire.

The next morning I got up and drove to the road block for information, they said the road was still closed with no more information at this time. The local radio station said the same thing. About 15 minutes later (about 7:45), Mark found on the internet that the road was open so the mad scramble began. Most of the people in the campground were headed North and they wanted to get going also. We were able to get on the road at 9 again and decided to drive beyond the location of the fire to Watson Lake. This meant we would miss our scheduled stop at Laird Hot Springs but we shouldn’t have any more problems with the fire.

The roads this day were really washboard type, lots of mountain driving with lots of curves and of course, the unending construction. We saw lots of signs saying watch out for wildlife but we didn’t see anything until we turned a sharp corner and almost hit a big horn Dahl sheep standing in the middle of the road. Luckily we were driving really slow around that corner, we had to stop completely to wait until it moved to the side of the road. Our first encounter with wild life on this trip!

We did stop at Laird Hot Springs for a break and lunch, lo and behold, Mark was on the CB radio trying to hail us to say he had pulled into the campground for the night anyway. Most of the places we drove through didn’t have any cell phone service so he couldn’t contact us on the phone and if we hadn’t stopped for lunch where we did, he couldn’t have reached us via CB radio either. While we were stopped, Joe/Loretta happened to stop there too so we managed to get everyone except Bob/Vicky, good job Mark. Anyway, we decided to spend the night there also because it had rained pretty hard and the fire up the road was more under control than the morning report.

Laird Hot Springs has natural hot water bubbling up, they’ve made it into different temperature pools for swimming/soaking. Lorraine and I didn’t go in but the ones that did enjoyed the experience. They have a real nice boardwalk around the pools with wildlife but we didn’t see any. Lots of signs saying don’t feed the bears and moose habitat area but nothing while we were there. We did have a little squirrel join us for dinner, pictures to follow.

We left Laird Hot Springs the next morning and drove through the wild fire area. There wasn’t not too much smoke in the area we traveled but the fire had sure burned a large area. We made it to Watson Lake, the home of the Sign forest. The sign forest was started by a solder during the building of the Alcan back during WWII and has now grown to an estimated 60,000 signs. I think they said about 1,000 signs are placed each year, they keep adding posts and expanding the forest.

The next day we drove to Whitehorse in the Yukon, our first trip to this province. Our plans are to stay here for at least three days, rest up a bit from traveling everyday. This is the largest city in and the capital of Yukon. Once we got to the campground we again met up with Bob/Vicky and our group was all together once again. Bob/Vicky didn’t know we had stopped for the night at Laird Hot Springs and they were a day ahead of us. They told us about driving to Skagway, Alaska and recommended the drive and a visit to the town.

So on Sunday we took off for a ~two hour drive to Skagway with Tom/Dorothy and Rob/Norma, through some mountains and along lots of lakes. Skagway is a stop for most of the cruise ships and there were two in town while we were there. Even with that many folks wandering around town it wasn’t too crowded and the gals were able to go through lots of the shops (read that as tourist traps, in my book). On the way back to Whitehorse we stopped for lots of photo opportunities, we were gone almost 11 hours on this trip, everyone was pretty tired when we got back. We also got to see some and got pictures of some bears too.

Today we headed into town, Lorraine found a place to get her hair done, she wanted to get it about a week before the wedding and this worked out well. She is very satisfied with the result. After that, Lorraine and Sue went to town to go through some art galleries, I think they hit 4 of them. Tonight we are going to the Follies with Rob/Norma and Tom/Dorothy but it doesn’t start until 8:30, pretty late for me but hopefully it will be entertaining enough to keep me awake, we’ll see. So with that, here are a bunch of pictures.

Dawson City pictures.

Our campground and all of us at mile zero in Dawson Creek.

Lorraine and Chuck, Mile Zero placard.

The real Mile Zero in town, pot luck dinner.

Our wildlife pictures, beware of the squirrels, they are pretty bold.

Along the roads, shows some of the terrain we traveled though.

This Dahl Sheep crossed directly in front of us, so close we had to come to a complete stop.

Laird Hot Springs pictures.

The brave ones that went in, Loretta, Joe, Mark, Sue and Dorothy, Sue and Dorothy.

Some buffalo along the side of the road.

Some of the burned area.

Smoke from the fire, entering Yukon.

Watson Lake, home of the Sign Forest.

Tom/Dorothy pointing to their sign, Chuck attaching their sign.

DSCN0001 Here is our sign.

Mark and Joe with their signs.

Following are some pictures of the trip to/from Skagway.

A very pretty lake, called Emerald Lake, had colors ranging from green to dark blue.

We saw two bears alongside the road, the first two show both bears if you look closely. The little black bear climbed a tree in the third picture.

To go from the Yukon to Skagway required another border crossing both ways. Actually, we crossed into British Columbia a few miles before the Alaskan border.