Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Alaska Highway - Dawson Creek to Watson Lake

Monday, June 01, 2009 -This morning on the 13th day of our trip and a little over 2,200 miles from home we arrived in Dawson Creek and the start of the Alaska Highway. We took the obligatory photos at Mile Marker 0 and visited the Welcome Center for information and brochures. We made our way through the maze of road work in front of the Welcome Center and continued on following our route in the latest edition of Mile Post. Even though I had looked at it at home you don’t realize just how detailed it is until you start following your route through its pages. It didn’t take long to see that the descriptions of campgrounds and services as written by the owners are in many cases quite a stretch from reality. The Mike and Terri Church book, Alaska Camping, is much more accurate and using the two books together seems the best way to go. Just outside of Dawson Creek we made a short 4 mile loop onto the Old Alaska Highway to see the historic Kiskatinaw River Bridge. It is the only remaining wooden bridge left from the original highway. It is quite impressive to see and definitely worth making the small detour. We stopped for fuel at Shepherd’s Inn (mm 72) and paid .0879 per liter for diesel, the most we have paid so far on this trip. Based on the recommendation in Alaska Camping, we stopped for the night at Sikanni River Campground and RV Park (mm162). As the name suggests, it is located along the river and surrounded by trees. It is not fancy but the scenery is pretty and it is quiet and peaceful. For the first time on this trip we felt like we were really camping – we even roasted hot dogs and made s’mores on a campfire! The owners are nice and welcoming and the prices for camping were the best we have paid at only $25 for full hookups. After dinner we got a quite unexpected surprise when the owners came to the door and refunded our full camping fee because we won their nightly door prize drawing. Apparently every night they have a drawing and one camper gets a free night. If you are heading up this way stop and stay a night with these nice people. As for road conditions, there was a little construction right in Dawson Creek and about a mile of construction in Fort St. John otherwise it was smooth sailing on fair to good roads.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009 – The Alaska Highway is full of old historic lodges, diners, and quirky little places to see and today we got a taste of several of them. We got on the road about 8:15 and stopped at Buckinghorse River Lodge (mm175) for breakfast. Their ads say, “Good food, over 1000 truckers can’t be wrong!” We think they should change the ad now to say, “… over 1000 truckers and 4 campers can’t be wrong!” The food was good and it had a very homey atmosphere complete with 3 truckers that we enjoyed talked to over breakfast. The next spot we came upon, thanks to Mile Post, was the Trappers Den. It is a small sort of trading post run by a family of trappers. There was quite a selection of pelts, moccasins, leather shirts, and other interesting attire. I ended up buying a pair of moose leather moccasins that are very cozy and comfortable. We continued on northward on the highway until we came to mile marker 422 where we made a brief stop at the Toad River Lodge. They have an impressive collection of hats covering the entire ceiling of three rooms. The note on the board says that the current count is over 7,400 hats. We considered staying there for the night but made the big mistake of continuing on a little further, as I will explain. We thought we might go on to Liard Hot Springs but Bill Dickey was getting really tired so we pulled in to the Northern Rockies Lodge at Muncho Lake. Their advertisement says if you stay there they will give you a .10 per liter discount on fuel. We were both at about half full so the guys pulled up to the pump and starting filling the tanks. Somewhere midway through the process Bill noticed that the pump said $1.699 but since the most we have paid anywhere is .88 per liter he thought it must be something other than the price and they both continued to fill the fuel tanks. When they finished Bill came inside and asked the lady to confirm the price and she said it was, in fact, $1.69 per liter. He asked her how on earth she could justify charging twice as much as anyone else in the country and she actually got very defensive and tried to justify the price. At this point we just didn’t want to go any further so we got a camping spot – another big mistake. They charged us $48 for a space with 20 amp power, very poor water pressure, no sewer, no television, no wi-fi and it was so uneven we couldn’t even level the motorhome. In addition, they charge an extra 12.50 to park your tow car in your space so we had to disconnect and leave the car up at the office. Then to top it all off, after we got set up Bill went over to the washroom and discovered that they charge an extra dollar if you want to use their showers. I told the cashier at the desk that she needs to tell her boss that RVers have a huge network of websites, forums, blogs, and internet bulletin boards and that we plan to post notices on as many as possible as well as tell everyone we meet not to stop at this location.

Wednesday, June 03, 2009 – We left Northern Rockies Lodge and continued north to Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park. There is a ten-minute walk down a boardwalk through beautiful tropical vegetation. Although the guide book says it is frequented by wildlife we only saw a few Canada Geese. The hot springs area has a nice deck with benches as well as restrooms and a changing area. When you enter the pools you start at the far left which is about like bath water with a few cold patches throughout. As you climb the steps into the next pool and continue moving toward the right end the water gets warmer and warmer until at the far end it is uncomfortably hot. We stayed at the springs for a little over an hour and as we were leaving we were told that there was a forest fire just up ahead and traffic was dependent on a pilot car. We were only detained briefly and then directed through the area where we saw quite a bit of burned area and a few areas with small fires and lots of smoke. We decided that today would be a short day with our destination being Watson Lake, home of the famous Sign Post Forest. On the way we saw several buffalo and about six bears including a mother with two cubs. We pulled into Watson Lake about 2:15 and headed to the Downtown RV Park. It’s not much in the way of looks but it has full hookups, is very centrally located to everything we want to see, and it is only $26.50 per night with a Good Sam card. Bill and I walked over to Hougen’s Department Store located in a log building right on the highway. It is not a department store like JC Penney or Macy’s but it had an interesting assortment of merchandise. I noticed a post office and mailed a letter I have been waiting to mail then we stopped at the small market on the way back to the campground. It is very interesting to see the different brands and packaging compared to at home and instead of seeing packages in English and Spanish everything is in English and French. After dinner we walked across the street to the Northern Lights Center to see the program on the Northern Lights. The program was OK but not great. From there we walked over to the Sign Post Forest which is really interesting. While there we met a very interesting couple who currently live in Alaska. The man and all of his four sons have completed the Iditarod, and he and two of the sons have won the race. Several years ago they built a truck stop 60 miles north of the Arctic Circle and encouraged us to go at least that far and said that driving all the way to Prudhoe Bay is quite doable. When they were living in California in the mid to late 90s they put together several luxury tours to Alaska so they had a lot of good information for things to see and do on this trip.

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