Tag: Alcan Highway

We made it to ALASKA! First stop: Valdez

After a little over a week we were finally back on the road heading towards the Alcan border. We camped one night in another Yukon government campground in Snag Junction. We arrived late and left early the next day. On the way to the border we stopped at the “Welcome to Alaska” sign and took a picture. We don’t normally take those pictures but hey, we freaking DROVE all the way to Alaska.

Welcome to Alaska!

The border crossing went smoothly. The officer was very friendly, only asked a few typical questions and sent us on our way without inspection. The road has gotten very rough before and after the crossing. There are lots of frost heaves and potholes. We have to drive slowly to avoid more problems. But that’s fine because even though the road isn’t great the scenery is gorgeous!  After leaving Whitehorse we have seen 3 trucks pulled over changing tires.

Driving along the Tok Cutoff we camped at our first pullout. The highway noise wasn’t too bad as in the evening a car will pass here and there. The scenery was great looking out the window at the mountains. It was here that I randomly decided we would take a side trip to Valdez. Some of you may have heard of Valdez from the infamous Exxon oil spill in 1989. I decided to take the trip because the Milepost said the Richardson highway was beautiful and with the Fourth of July around the corner I figured we would try and avoid the crowd and go to Valdez instead of heading towards the popular Kenai peninsula.

Boondocking at a pullout along the Glenn Highway (in between Tok and Glennallen). El Oso is pretty dirty from all the hard driving.

On the day we were heading for Valdez the weather was awful. It was cloudy so we couldn’t even see the gorgeous mountains I read about. We did get to see the Alaskan pipeline in the distance which was cool. When we got to the top of the highway a cloud came through and totally occluded the visibility of the road. We could only see about 15 feet ahead of us. We pulled over to wait for it to pass. After about 10 minutes and watching cars haul butt past us we decided that we should keep going. After like 3 minutes we descended and were out of the cloud and everything was all good. We pass by a couple of waterfalls along the road.

We camped at Bear Paw RV park as we needed to do our weekly laundry and showers (haha we are gross hippies). It was $45 a night! But the showers were great and the laundry machines were the best I’ve ever used in my 3 years of traveling. The machines use coins which are $3 a piece and each machine takes one coin. The guy working said one dryer holds 2 loads. I though he was full of crap. The dryers were huge and looked like they came off the Enterprise. But man he was right, they worked awesome.

Enough about laundry, our campsite was great. Yet it was $45 a night but you get what you pay for. The day we arrived was so cloudy and gloomy but the next day the sun burned the clouds away and we could see that we were literally surrounded by snow capped mountains. We could walk to the harbor, walk to get food (which we didn’t do a lot of because the prices were exorbitant,$15 for a hamburger, $30 for pizza). The color of the water was a very pretty cool blue.

Tim’s wound is still healing so we couldn’t do any long hiking but we did walk around the city quite a bit. There is a nice park we walked to and walking the docks is always nice. They have some serious fishing boats here! We had to leave on July 3rd but we have plans for the fourth. See how we celebrated the nation’s birthday on the next article.

Belated Father’s Day meal of corned beef hash.

Goodbye Cassiar, Helloooo Alcan!

It was tough to leave Stewart as the scenery was amazing and our campsite was awesome. We spent a lot of days driving so I’ll sum it up briefly where we stayed. After Stewart we continued on the Cassiar highway to Morchuea Lake Recreation Site. This part of the highway is very remote with limited services. We only stayed one night because the mosquitoes were too bad to go outside. I was working on the batteries and I usually don’t have much problem with flies, they just don’t bite me much. I got eaten alive, my legs had scabs from them even though I didn’t scratch them because those suckers are so big. There was however a nice view of Mt. Edziza across the lake.

The next day we continued on the Cassiar highway passing through Jade City. It’s not really a city but a store that sells a bunch of jade and other precious stones. We thought we would buy a bunch of it for wholesale price but it turns out it was more expensive than buying it from Chinatown in San Francisco. We ended up getting a couple pieces but I later threw it away in the Yukon River in Whitehorse because I thought it cursed us from all the bad luck we started having as soon as we bought it. I figured I would give the Indian ancestors back their jade and it would help us get over the bad luck.

After Jade city we finished up the Cassiar highway at Watson Lake, crossing into the Yukon territory for the first time. We stayed at a Government campground which cost $12($9 American). British Columbia has free recreation sites that you can camp at. The Yukon territory has government campgrounds that aren’t free but $12 a night isn’t bad. For that you get well groomed sites, some of them with lake views, free firewood, and water (not hookups just where you can fill up). Again we didn’t stay in Watson Lake long. We checked out the signpost forest and the visitor center. The fridge was on the fritz and we needed to get to Whitehorse for parts.

Black Bear eating the yummy grass off the highway

After Watson Lake we were back on the Alcan highway and headed on to Whitehorse. Many of you might wonder, “How does Zygi handle all this driving?”  Well on the days we have long drives we leave right before his morning nap.  The hum of the 7.3 diesel engine lulls him to sleep and after about 2 hours he wakes up and we find a place to stop and let him out to explore.  We try to find a visitor center so he is indoors and I don’t have to worry about him getting bitten by mosquitos.  After his snack, I let him crawl around the visitor center or museum and he has a ball.  Everyone else likes to interact with him too so it is a good way to socialize him a little. Then after about an hour and a half we hit the road again in time for his next nap. By the time he wakes up from that nap we are usually done or close to done driving for the day.

Tim wrote about all the bad luck we had in Whitehorse in the previous article, so check it out if you haven’t already.  It was one thing after the other and the worst was Tim sustaining second degree deep burns over 30% of his left thigh. Long distance travel isn’t all singing and dancing. It’s just life, not a vacation in the Caribbean.