Yesterday two of the three families that we are going with arrived in Seattle. Tomorrow we head for the beginning of the ALCON highway at Dawson's Creek, British Columbia, to meet up with the fourth Family of our group. From there it is on to Whitehorse in the Yukon, then cut over to Skagway, Alaska, board a ferry to Haines Junction, Alaska, then on to Anchorage and points north before turning back into the Yukon. It amazes me that less than two months ago I was still working and still living in Vista.
The internet system on the roof quit working because we are so far north that the antenna can’t see the satellite, which is above the equator, south of Texas. So I am switching to EarthLink dial-up until we get back in the U.S.
I think of our troops overseas everyday and wish them well. It’s going to be a long, hard, slog.
Family and friends…
This month has been an absolute adventure. Alaska really still is America’s frontier. I'll remember this month for the vastness of the land, the scenery, the lack of a "night time", the history, the gold fields, the neat little towns, the forest fires, the mosquitoes, and the really friendly people that we met everywhere. I'll have to divide this month into more than one newsletter because we covered so much territory and saw so many things.
On June 1st we crossed into British Columbia... just to the east of Seattle at a place called Sumas. We then connected up with Canadian Highway 97 and followed the Fraser River north, through a number of small towns. The Fraser River is a large river that runs south, down the middle of British Columbia, to Vancouver. The views along the river were spectacular.
We stopped the first night at Williams Lake, pop 10,000. The RV Park, such as it was, is built in the middle of the town rodeo grounds. It was here that we were introduced to the first of many RV Parks in Canada that only have hookups for water and a meager 15 amps of electrical service. No sewer connection and no cable TV. What we eventually discovered is that the electrical power in all remote RV Parks in Canada is suspect. We routinely ran into low voltage and low current. 100 volts with 15 amps of electricity is really crummy. That’s less than what you would get out of any wall outlet in your house. Our motor home is designed to operate on 120 volts with a robust 50 amps of electrical service. That way we can run the microwave, heater, water heater, both TVs, both air conditioners, and anything else we want at the same time. (Just in case I never mentioned it before, we bought the RV for many reasons, NOT INCLUDED in those reasons is because we want to rough it, camp, save money, or do without the creature comforts that we have grown to expect.) Yeah, I know... I'm spoiled.
The second night we stopped in Dawson Creek, pop 11,000. We chose an RV Park that advertised they have internet available. It turned out that on the outside wall of the office they have a pay phone with a modem plug on it. That was their idea of internet access. Of course that was totally worthless to me because I had no way to determine if EarthLink had a local number and I also had no money for the phone. As luck would have it there was a Super 8 motel near the RV Park that advertised free Wi-Fi in every room. I took my laptop in, explained my predicament to the girl behind the check-in counter, and she let me sit in the lobby and get on-line with no problem. This was the first of many people that I met this month who had a friendly, helpful, "we're all out here in the wilderness together" kind of attitude. Very friendly folks.
The next day we found an internet cafe in Dawson Creek that let you bring in your own PC and plug it into their DSL connection for $3.00 an hour. It worked great. Subsequently, internet cafes became the way for me to stay on line during the month. Practically every town we stopped at, which by the way were far and few between the further north we went, had DSL available in a hotel lobby or an internet cafe on a pay as you go basis. They also had PCs available for people who did not want to use their own. Dawson Creek also has a Wal-Mart, but since we stocked up in Seattle, we didn't go in. However, we did load up on fried chicken at the KFC so I would have lunch in the frig for the next couple of days. As many of you know, the refrigerator in the RV is way less than half the size of one in a normal house, so we have to go shopping on a pretty regular basis. Plus, we don't have the luxury of a big pantry for a lot of canned goods and the like.
But I digress. Dawson Creek is located on the eastern border of British Columbia ...at the edge of the wilderness. To the west and north is the Yukon and Alaska. To the east is the rest of Canada, and civilization. Dawson Creek is where the Alaska Highway, originally called the ALCAN, starts. The highway is just over 1,400 miles long and terminates at the town of Delta Junction, Alaska... 95 miles south of Fairbanks. The highway was built in 1942 by the U.S. Army to serve as a military highway during WWII. They started construction in March and, incredibly, finished in October. It was an amazing accomplishment considering the utter desolation and harshness of the territory. When construction equipment broke down they just left it where it broke. And when they finished the road, the army left all the remaining equipment where it sat because it was too expensive to haul it out. As a result there is still equipment lying around, and a number of small towns have stocked museums with the leftovers.
http://www.tourismdawsoncreek.com/
In 1948 the road was opened to the public. It has been continually straightened and improved by Canada from the original “S” shaped gravel road ever since. The last major improvement effort was completed in the late 1990's. We found it to be a first rate, paved, straight, two lane road with wide shoulders for most of its length. However, the road isn't so good that you can put your vehicle on cruise control and just sit there. You have to actually drive every mile. But it's easy to find your way on the road. There is a milepost marker, a small white pole, on the side of the road every mile. You can buy a book called the Milepost that describes what is located at each mile post marker. Every 30-40 miles along the road is a mini-town. The typical mini-town has a population of about 15-25 people and has a hotel, gas station, restaurant, and maybe a store. Every 150-200 miles there is an actual town of 200-400 people. We saw many RVs on the road but we also saw many tourists in cars. Lots of people use the Alaska Highway in a variety of vehicles to go see Alaska.
From Dawson Creek, mile 0, we headed northwest, stopping for the night every 250 miles or so. I say "night," but it never got dark. The sun would go down around 11:30 p.m. but it never actually got dark. It was the strangest thing to be thinking that is must be about 4:00 in the afternoon only to find out that it is actually 9:00 at night. And every day just kept getting longer and longer. British Columbia and the Yukon are light years away from Southern California. The Yukon is about twice the size of California, but the population of the whole territory is only 31,000 people, and 22,000 of them live in Whitehorse. The wilderness just goes on forever and it never gets boring. Just the sky alone is an ever changing panorama.
We spent our first night in the Yukon in Watson Lake. Watson Lake, population 1,800, is an interesting place because that's where the sign forest is. In 1942 a homesick soldier nailed a sign up on a pole pointing to his hometown. Other soldiers saw this and soon did the same thing. Since then countless 1,000s of others have followed suit. People come from all over the world to leave signs from their hometown. The good folks of Watson Lake keep putting more and more telephone poles into the ground so people have something to nail their signs to. I saved my old California license plates specifically for the sign forest.
http://www.yukoninfo.com/watson/signpostforest.htm
We crossed the continental divide at the northern end of the Rocky Mountains between Watson Lake and Whitehorse. We were very glad to see Whitehorse because it got us back to a city with all the good things cities have to offer the weary traveler. They have a Wal-Mart, Kentucky Fried Chicken, internet cafe, golf course, and things to see and do for tourists. Whitehorse is a historically important town on the Yukon River that connected the interior of the Yukon with the gold fields of Dawson City and Alaska. Riverboats used to move people and goods on the Yukon River in the same manner that riverboats plied the Mississippi