And so the adventure begins! We left Marysville WA headed to the Canadian border at Sumas, which is a smaller border crossing, and quicker to get through than Blaine, our wait was only 15 minutes. After being asked a lot of questions and showing our passports we crossed with no problems. You can bring food and alcohol across but as expected they don’t like guns, several questions were asked on this subject.
I highly recommend getting a book called “The Milepost” that is a valuable resource for traveling the North Country. It provides information about side trips, points of interest, camping, etc. We took Basic Itinerary #1 which is the inbound route, Alaska Highway via West Access Route.
As I said in my last post we left the caravan, Mark’s truck and the Axle Crutch trailer in Marysville. We removed the back seats in the Tahoe, bought sleeping bags and will sleep in the truck as this is the busy time of the year and hotel/motels can run around $100-$150 a night. Our destination is Lake Susitna where our friends Jimmie and John Francis have a cabin.
Traveling the Trans-Canada Highway 1 East we followed the Fraser River, which is beautiful, stopping along the way to enjoy lunch.
Oh one very important thing to pack is BUG SPRAY! Thank you to my cousin Doug McCombs who gave us some killer spray awhile back as these mosquitoes are hungry.
Hells Gate, which is the deepest and narrowest point of the Fraser River, will be on your left.
200 million gallons of water flow through this passage every minute, twice the volume of Niagara Falls.
We spent the night in Lac La Hache at Big Country Campground and RV Park.
Set up camp and prepared our dinner over a Sterno stove which work really well.
Time for bed, hey it bets sleeping on the ground! The only problem is that in the summer time the sun never sets, in the evening you think it is 7pm and it will be midnight.
The Trans-Canada Highway has lots of turnout spots with toilets and trash bins along the way. The Alaskan Highway has turnout spots with toilets that are few and far between but they do allow camping almost anywhere. Several folks with campers took advantage and set up camp along the roadside. Speaking of campers, we have never seen so many truck campers. It really is the way to go or a small travel trailer as you can get into so many spots that the big rigs can’t.
Anyway, the next day we continued on and stopped at the Tourism Discovery Centre in Williams Lake. It was a beautiful log building with friendly staff plus they have free Internet with computers. There was this display that everyone got a chuckle out of as it was pretty true, travelers have all kinds of things strapped on to their vehicles.
We stopped for lunch at the Huble Homestead Historic Site in Giscome Portage Regional Park which is the oldest home in the region.
Chetwynd is home to the International Chainsaw Carving Championship held in June. We stopped at the Visitors Centre to check out the display of carvings, there are 123 throughout the town. It is amazing what these people can do with a chainsaw.
We reached Dawson Creek around 8:30pm, fueled up and had dinner. The weather was cold, windy and raining so we decided not to stay and just move on through the night switching drivers. There isn’t much from Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson. With all the bedding folded to one side in the back on the truck and 6 pillows it made for comfortable sleeping, we referred to it as the marshmallow bed. Dawson Creek is where you pick up the world famous Alaska Highway. Note the clean truck, it won't last long!
So far the roads have been pretty good but once on the Alaska Highway things started to change. For one thing the highway wasn’t marked with a dividing line in stops and no reflectors making it difficult to see where you should be plus it was raining hard. At this point we were entering the Northern Rockies. Road construction crews were doing their best to keep the roads drivable fixing frost heaves, washed out sections and resurfacing. We just drove slow and continued on with the rain stopping when we reached Fort Nelson around 3am and fueled up at the only gas station open. The Spectra Energy natural gas processing plant at Fort Nelson, the largest in North America, purifies the gas before sending it south through the 800-mile-long pipeline to the British Columbia lower land. The plant was in a shut down and there wasn’t a hotel room to be found anywhere.
Moving on the scenery was changing as we got higher into the Rockies and the sunrise was around 4:30 but prior to that it never really got dark. The roads wind and twist as you make your way to Summit Lake, elevation 4,250 being the highest summit on the Alaska Highway, but they are in good condition. We passed folks that had camped for the night at turnouts along the way, talk about a view to wake up to. This is where we finally started to see some wildlife.
Dall sheep just chilling on the side of the road.
It was very pretty to be at this high elevation with the river right beside you.
This isn’t a great picture but it is a caribou.
Next is Muncho Lake, known for its beautiful deep green and blue waters.
Muncho Lake is one of the largest natural lakes in the Canadian Rockies. This picture doesn’t do it justice.
Why is the the lake Jade green in color?
Buy this time we were getting hungry and we came across this truck stop, bakery, lodging house, bathhouse, and gas station kind of place. Looked good to us and we needed a break anyway, so we walk in and this gruff looking man (the owner) just looks at us when we ask for some breakfast. When he does speak he informs us that he turns his grill on at 6am but doesn’t start cooking until 7am sharp and the coffee is over there. Well alrighty then I guess we will wait until 7. During our wait several truckers started to roll in, that’s a good sign as my Dad use to always say, “Eat where the truckers eat and you won’t go wrong”. We enjoyed a hearty breakfast and good conversation with the them.
Traveling on we rounded a corner and were stopped dead in our tracks as there was a herd of Buffalo in the road. They weren't bothered one bit by the cars as they just meandered on their way. You always stop when you see cars pulled over as there is going to be some form of wildlife.
Next stop is Liard River Hotsprings Provincial Park. This is a must for the weary traveler. $10 gets you into the park, they have camping as well, and a nice changing area at the springs. The water comes out of the ground between 108 and 120 degrees, it has a sulfur smell but it isn’t over powering and it feels so good!
Traveling on we had to stop at Watson Lake Signpost Forest. It was started by Carl K. Lindley of Danville, IL, a U.S. Army soldier working on the construction of the Alaska Highway in 1942. He got hurt and while on light duty was given the job of making a sign. He asked his superior if he could also added a sign for his hometown as he was home sick and the answer was yes. And so began the Signpost Forest, travelers have added to it ever since making a total of more than 72,000 signs.
They only thing I had was a bumper sticker from a restaurant back home so I added it to the collection.
After Watson Lake you leave British Columbia and enter the Yukon Territory, this is where we spotted our first bear.
Whitehorse was our destination for the night; we stayed at The Caribou RV Park. Would have liked to enjoy a campfire but there was a ban on due to recent forest fires.
On the road again…
Speaking of roads, we ran into patches for some times 30 miles long that were being worked on, this is a tough climate in the winter and they are always under construction. Mark washed the truck at the campground auto wash before we left, well that was a waste of money.
The drive along Destruction Bay is very pretty with snow-covered mountains in the background, for some reason I didn’t take a picture, shame on me. Anyway, the town is one of several that grew out of the building of the Alaska Highway. It earned its name when a storm destroyed buildings. It was one of the may relay stations spaced at 100-mile intervals to give truck drivers a break and a chance to repair their vehicles.
Burwash Landing is one of the oldest settlements in the Yukon.
If Mark and I said it one time we must have said it a hundred times, “We are so glad we didn’t bring the rig”. The rigs we saw were filthy and all the bouncing up and down can’t be good for them. Plus on some stretches if you broke down there is no place to pull over to say fix a flat tire. We heard stories of broken slides, cabinets flying open dumping their contents, not to mention a tow bill to the nearest town which could be 100 miles away and very costly.
The folks that fixed the roads definately have job secuarity. With frost heaves, pot holes, washed out edges and resurfacing they will never get caught up.
We were told the roads were just fine, that may be true in some spots but again we are so happy we left the rig home!
We made it to Alaska!!!
We made it to Alaska!!!
It was decided that maybe all the mud would protect the truck from rock chips.
Once in Alaska we experienced frost heaved roads that were like roller coasters. From Tok we took Highway 1 down to Glennallen, then 30 miles later we turned on Lake Louis road to our final destination, Lake Louise Lodge where we met our friends Jimmie and John. 2,175 miles traveled from the Canadian border. After hugs and a beer we started the next leg of the trip, a 30-minute boat ride across Lake Louise then Lake Susitna to the Francis cabin (they call it a cabin but I call it a Lodge).
The next morning we got a tour of our surroundings.
View from the front window of the cabin.
The Cabin.
The power source.
The very comfortable outhouse is on the left with a nice walkway leading to the cabin.
This summers project was Jimmie's quilting cabin. They had one wall up when we got there. So the next morning John, Jay and Mark built the front wall and then John called friends on the other side of the lake to come help raise the wall.
The weather was unusually warm for this area with highs in the eighties. Sunscreen and bug spray the guys continued on for the next few days with the building.
Jimmy and I went to the main land with Tom who was picking up his wife and a friend for the holiday. Everything has to come by boat, barge or snowmobile. His boat was loaded, lucky there was enough room for passenages.
Once back at the dock everything has to be unloaded and John has a great way to get items to the cabin with ease.
Later on that night Jimmie and I had cocktails on the deck.
We were all entertained by two small active puppies everyday, Buddy and Hanna.
We spent the 4th with their friends that had cabins on the other side of the lake. It was interesting to see other peoples cabins and solar set ups. Outhouses are very important and they all had different styles. Some were closier to the cabins then others. Jimmie and Johns was very close to the cabin with a blue styrofoam seat making it warm to sit on. This one was farther away so they had a signal on the post, if the red plate was down it was in use.
Like I said before everything to be moved from the mainland comes by water or ice. Jimmie and John had furniture, other folks had trusses and trucks to be moved. The owner of one of the lodges had a barge that he rented out so they are got together and hired it to move their items.
Once unload they headed out to the next drop off point.
The guys got back to work and finished the quilting cabin. Jimmie is one lucky lady! So glad we were a part of the process.
Their son Jay made a shooting range on the back of the property and invited us to do some target shooting.
Lake Susitna around 9pm, beautiful.
All good things must come to an end so we loaded up the boat and headed to the mainland.
We want to thank you both for a wonderful time. Good friends, good food, good drink and a great 5 star lodge complete with satelite tv and internet, what more could you want! And just think this wouldn't have been possible if we didn't venture out of our rig 2 years ago and say "Hi" to our neighbors. We love you both and will see you next time on the east coast.
Jimmie and John Francis
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Thanks for following our travels and be sure to check out my handmade jewelry on my Etsy store by clicking on the link www.etsy.com/shop/WanderingDesigns
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