Starting the Alaska Highway
Alaska Highway, British Columbia, Canada Thursday, July 10, 2003
A beautiful warm day without the 20 mile an hour winds! Wouldn’t you know that our first nice day, the parts finally made it (the first missing shipment – the second shipment is still floating around). We could have stayed one more day in Grand Prairie for free, but we were really eager to get on the road. Left about 3pm and drove past bright yellow fields of canola. 
We stayed at Dawson Creek, British Columbia where the Alaska Highway starts – Mile 0. 
Had dinner at the famous Dew Drop Inn in the Alaska Hotel. This was such a popular spot when the Highway was being created in 1942 that folks would come in the front door, have one beer, have to leave out the back door and get back in line at the front! Food was good and the restaurant had very rustic décor – a fun place. 
Alaska Highway, British Columbia, Canada Friday, July 11, 2003
Up early this morning (lost another hour yesterday crossing into British Columbia, so now we’re on Pacific Time) and got on the road by 7am. We heard that campgrounds fill up early, so we wanted to start early and stop early. We reached our target area around 1pm and decided to keep on going as there was nothing to do. The first part of the drive was through forests of aspens and evergreens on good roads. We saw a dead moose on the side of the road and saw signs warning about caribou and moose on the roads. 
The second part of the drive we headed up into the mountains and we saw beautiful snow-capped mountains in the distance and those beautiful glacier blue/green lakes. We spotted some stone sheep (unique to British Columbia and Alberta) as well as a live moose. An RV traveling in the opposite direction kicked up a stone and now we have a big windshield nick – we’ll won’t fix it unless it spiders out to the rest of the windshield because it will probably happen again before we get home in the Fall. Our campground is in Toad River – an interesting campground and beautiful spot surrounded by mountains and next to a marshy lake. After hooking up the RV, we walked down to the lake and there is a moose standing in the middle of the lake, eating the plants off the bottom of the lake. Really cool. The café in the campground has a ceiling covered in baseball caps from all over – more than 6,000. It is also a Greyhound bus stop and people come off the bus and order food – this one girl handles the RV campsite assignments, takes the orders, delivers the food and I think everything else that needs doing. No phone service at all here and I expect we won’t have any until we reach Whitehorse. No email today – but hopefully, we’ll get internet access at tomorrow’s campground. 
Alaska Highway, British Columbia, Canada Saturday, July 12, 2003
Had breakfast at the café at the campground and didn’t get on the road until after 9am. So much for yesterday’s idea to be up and out early. 
On our way to Watson Lake in Yukon Territory, we stopped at a natural hot springs called Liard. There are two sets of springs, one about 100 degrees and the second about 120 degrees. We parked across the street with lots of room for large RVs pulling cars (means you can’t back up – ever!) and walked a short trail to the springs. Boy did they feel good, but needed a nap afterwards. It was nice to just walk back to the RV, take and nap and have lunch.
Drove until about 3pm and arrived at Watson Lake. 
This is a “strip town” – laid out along the Alaska Highway. Not much here, but it is famous for its signpost forest – thousands and thousands of town signs from all over the world. The campground here is just a giant gravel parking lot with about a hundred RVs packed in side by side with less than 5 feet between them. We’d been warned by folks that many of the RV parks up here are like this. They did have an RV wash – they provide the water and we provide everything else. But it was good because the dust was so thick it wouldn’t just rinse off – we had to scrub! The dust comes from short stretches of gravel patches on the road – they are fine for driving on, compacted and smooth, but they sure throw up the dust. By the way, the gasoline is going up the further north we go. Now it is about $.85 per liter (about 3.3 liters to the gallon) and the exchange rate is about 20-25%. That makes a gallon of gas about $2.10 – and we fill up with 40-60 gallons at a time – ouch!
