Category: Alaska Highway

August 12th – Watson Lake to Whitehorse

I didn’t make very good time on the Cassiar because of rough roads.   Now that I am on the Alaska Highway (also called the Alcan), it’s not much better.  There are many construction areas, causing delays of 30 minutes to an hour.  6  1/2  hours became more like 8.   Especially with restroom breaks and picture stops.   But this is not a race and I have no real schedule, so no worries!

Construction zones involve waiting till a pilot car can guide the line of vehicles through a spot  where they are working:

I left early in the morning and arrived before dark at the Caribou RV Park,  https://www.caribou-rv-park.com/  which is 22 miles east of Whitehorse.   I wish I had picked a place closer to town, but the setting was more woodsy and quiet.  The ones I saw later closer to town would’ve been like parking lots and noisy.

Rest-stop beauties:

Marsh Lake and Dam:

I got in early in the afternoon, so had time enough to drive into Whitehorse, get an oil change and shopped for more groceries.  [Just as my nephew predicted, I was in the middle of the Yukon when I needed another oil change!]

There is a restaurant next door called the Wolfs Den.   http://www.wolfsden.ca/  While eating supper on the outside deck there, a fox walked right up!

Kinda hard to tell, but the fox is right in the middle to the right of the vehicles.  I wish I had gotten a better picture.  So I’ll borrow a pic from the internet.   He looked like this:

 

August 11th – To Watson Lake

Kinaskan Lake was about halfway to Watson Lake.  It was raining off and on all day long, making the rough roads even nastier.  My vehicle and camper began to get very muddy!  I even saw a lake along the way called “Mud Lake”!

North and south of Wheeler Lake are miles and miles of burnt trees from a forest fire.   I will have to find out when that was.

^It actually looked worse than this.  This pic was taken early on in the mud-slinging!

About a miles south of Taft Creek bridge, I saw a baby black bear!  It skeedaddled into the woods at the side of the road when I drove up, so I didn’t get a good picture of it, but it looked like this:

About halfway to Watson Lake, there is a place called Jade City.   It has gas and a souvenir store full of jade objects to buy.  http://jadecity.com/

I finally reached the Yukon and the Alaska Highway!!!

Tonight I stayed at the Baby Nugget RV Park, which is at mile 650 of the Alaska Highway just a 1/2 mile west of where the Cassiar (Hwy 37) runs into it.    http://nuggetcity.com/baby-nugget-rv-park/

The RV Park is very bare; very few trees, but it has a restaurant that is very reasonable next door, a car/rv wash, laundry, nice bathroom/shower facilities, full hookups  and a gas station. It’s just a cold, bare landscape though.  Since it had been days  of “roughing it”, I treated myself to supper at the restaurant.    I also treated my car and T@b to a shower at the car/rv wash!  Wanna guess how long it took to get dirty again?!

Because of the rough roads and rain, what should’ve been a 5  1/2 hr drive turned into about 8 hours.   It was 385 kilometers = 240 miles.   So less mileage than other days, but took way longer!