It’s Friday Night and we are about 220 miles north of Dawson Creek at the 439km marker on the Alaska Highway.
But before I get ahead of myself let me bring you up to speed.
The last two nights we spent in the Northern Lights RV Park in Dawson City.
John is Far left then Ron is on the right side and I’m next to Ron.
While in Dawson we took advantage of the shopping and museums about the Alaska Highway.
For instance - the original Highway is about 1800 miles long and was built in 8 months!
133 metal bridges were designed and installed. We can’t even build one bridge in 8 months now a days!
We all had to get our pictures taken in front of the mile zero marker.
Here is the whole gang… Furry friends included.
This photo is blurry. I downloaded it from John and my iPhoto messed it up. I need to get another copy.
This morning at 0930 we hit the road. We were officially northbound on the Alaska Highway.
As we were driving north I was talking to Kate about how as a younger man living in Colorado - I had always dreamed of one day making this trip...
and here I was! I never expected to be making the trip however in such a large rig. I always thought something more like the dog house or a van… How times change.
About 20 miles north of Dawson Creek is the Kiskatinaw Bridge. It is the last remaining original bridge on the Alcan.
It is no longer used as the road has been relocated.
It is constructed of 500,000 board feet of Creosote Lumber, is 534’ long, 100’ above the river, and took as long to build as it took to build the entire highway.
In 1978 a new bridge was built to bypass the original due to increasing truck weights.
It was in impressive structure to visit and a great reminder of the efforts of those men who built this highway in only 8 months during WWII.
Our drive north today was thru some varied terrain.
Nearing our days destination the forest has turned to a mix of Pine, Alder, and the ever present White Birch.
At times the drive is like driving thru a manicured park.
Our destination today was an abandoned Provincial Park near Prophet River.
Driving for miles thru the wilderness then coming upon an unmarked gravel road, I said what the heck, and made the left turn
into the gravel road. Sure enough it widened up and looped around and we found a quiet spot to spend the night.
It is abandoned so it’s free. No services, or water or anything but thats fine. It’s boon docking and our rig is perfectly set up for this.
There is only one other RV here besides the 3 of us.. nice.
I think it will be a quiet night.
Since the sun sets so late and comes up so early I have not had a chance to see the night sky…. I wonder if it even gets dark.
We’ve run thru mud and our rigs are filthy. Each day I take out a brush and clean off the back window so that we can at least see outside.
Tomorrow we will cross the high spot on the Alcan as we cross the Rockies and our destination is Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park, where we should have a nice hot dip in the springs.
Till then.
Oh the memories are flooding!!!
ReplyDeleteHey, don't expect to see any night skies on your trip. The farther you travel north the longer the days are. I never saw the stars at all on our journey. Before you know it you will be having 24 hours of day light. Gosh I loved that!!! The sun will set but it just doesn't get dark before it peeps up again. I had the most energy I've ever had in my life. I never got tired and sometimes it would be 1:00 or 2:00am and we'd still be up feeling like it was just mid afternoon. Did I mention how much I loved all the long daylight hours??? Don't think I could handle those dark winter months though.
We stayed for 3 days at Prophet River. That's where we met Mike and Terri Church (authors of the Alaska Camping book). Such nice folks. It was only us and them there at the time. Got a lot of R and R there as there was nothing even remotely close by to check out.
About the dirty rig.... They are all dirty on this trip! I think everyone washes them when they finally make it to Whitehorse, that's what we did. The RV park we stayed in there had a big self serve RV wash and a self serve dog wash too... we washed the truck, the RV and the dog!
You guys are traveling a lot faster than we did on our trip. Enjoy every bit of it!
Forgot to mention LIard Hot Springs. We really enjoyed that!!!
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