After our 2:00 briefing we all headed down to the center of Dawson Creek to the official “Mile Zero” milepost to have a group picture taken. There is a stone cairn
marking the spot where they started the Alaskan Highway in 1942. After the photo we all headed to the George Dawson Lodge for our welcome dinner. George Dawson was an early surveyor for the highway and both Dawson Creek and Dawson City are named for him. The dinner was a very nice buffet of beef and chicken. After the dinner we had a presentation by one of the docents from the Dawson Creek visitor's center giving us the history of the Alaska Highway. Until WWII, there was no road between Alaska and the U.S, or even most of Canada. There were a series of airports, but no roads. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor the military decided we needed to build a road to Alaska for defense purposes. Within a few months they had sent nearly 10,000 troops and civilian contractors to Dawson Creek, which had a permanent population of about 400 at the time. Within 18 months they had created a 2,500 mile highway from Dawson Creek to Fairbanks. She had a lot of cool old pictures from the early 40's of the road and it's construction. Of course, at that time it was all dirt and gravel.After the presentation the wagonmaster had everyone in the caravan do basic introductions. We have a total of thirteen rigs traveling with us. This includes the Wagonmaster and Tailgunner, so there are eleven customer rigs. All but two are motorhomes. We have one single traveler, Lindsey, who has a pickup truck with a big camper. Her husband, a Marine aviator, died about a year ago and she has decided to continue to travel. They also own a large bus motorhome, but she hasn't learned to drive it yet, so she took the camper on this trip. We also have one couple, Dave and Connie, who have a 30 ft. fifth wheel. Five of the couples on the trip also went with Larry on the caravan to the Calgary Stampede just before coming up to Dawson Creek. We have one couple in a Newell, Steve and Betty, who are on their sixth trip with Fantasy Tours. The rest of us are in an assortment of Class A motorhomes ranging from 27 ft. to 42 ft. Our Tailgunner has a Monaco Knight, a year newer than ours, but with the same floor plan.
One couple on the tour, Gary and Delena, had actually met some other friends of ours in Indiana at a service center earlier in the year. They met Ken and Bonnie Woepke and Ken realized that Gary and his wife were going on the same trip as us. Bonnie had emailed that information to us so we were really looking forward to meeting them. Turns out that Gary looks a lot like my best friend Barry Cohen, so it will be real easy for me to remember his name. (Barry – Gary) One of the couples in our group are from Canada, the rest are from the States. Only a couple of them are fulltimers like us. Almost all of the group are “baby boomer” generation and everyone seems to be very nice. I think we are going to have a good time. After the dinner we went back to the park for the rest of the night. Our trip tomorrow (Thursday) is going to be long, we are going 284 miles from Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson, B.C.
Thursday, July 16th – Day Two. We managed to be up at 6:00 and on the road by 8:00. We made a quick stop for fuel just North of Dawson Creek and then headed up the Alaska highway. This part of the highway is in very good condition and we traveled through mostly forested land. One of the interesting things about traveling the
Alaska Highway is the “animal sightings” as you travel. Everyone keeps track or animals seen and shares the sightings at the end of the day. Our first day of travel we saw one large bull moose, a black bear with two cubs, a large male black bear, and a couple of deer. Fortunately, all were well off the road, or were visible from a far enough distance to be able to slow down. Just about everyone on the road slows or stops when there is wildlife on the side of the road. Makes it pretty easy to avoid them. Although the road was pretty good, we did run into a major thunderstorm while on route. Fortunately there is not a lot of traffic on the road, so you just slow down and keep on traveling when the rain hits. We got into Fort Nelson about 3:00 and settled into the RV park with the help of our Wagonmaster. The RV Park, Westend RV Campground, was kind of a dump, but we were only going to be here one night. The spaces were pretty tight, but we got in without too much difficulty. We at least have 30 amp and sewer, which are the “gold standard” for RV parks up in the North Country. We decided not to bother putting the living room slide (road side front) out for the “one night stands”. We have been having some problems getting this slide in due to a weak motor, so we thought we would just not bother.We had a brief travel meeting at 5:00 where we discussed tomorrow's travel. We are leaving Fort Nelson, B.C. for Liard Hot Springs. After the briefing we headed down to the Boston Pizza restaurant in town for dinner. We took Dave and Connie with us because they didn't want to have to disconnect their truck from the trailer. We have seen Boston Pizza stores all over Canada, but this was the first time we have gone to one. The pizza was very good. I took enough home for lunch the next day. After dinner we stopped at the Fort Nelson Elks Lodge, which happened to be only a couple of blocks from the RV Park. This is one of the few Canadian Elks that has a bar. The four of us went in and had a drink and chatted a little with the bartender. We were also able to get a lodge pin, so they will be on our banner. Yea! After this cocktail we headed back to the coach for the night. We had no satellite, I think that is over until we are finished with the Alaska trip. We did have cable, so we were able to at least watch a couple of shows before we went to bed.
Friday, July 17th – Day Three. Today's drive was 191 miles from Fort Nelson, B.C. to the Laird River Hot Springs Provincial Park. We got out about 9:15 in the morning. We think we may be getting used to this early start stuff. Shortly after leaving the park we stopped buy fuel. This is the first time since we have been in Canada where the price of diesel has been over $1.00 per liter. Oh well, we knew fuel would not be cheap. On this part of the trip we were again mostly in rolling forested hills, but there were a couple of times when we had to stop for road construction. We were into some of the conditions I have heard people talk about regarding Alaska trips. We ran into two separate areas where we had to drive through construction on gravel surfaced roads. They had the traffic blocked so you only had one direction at a time going through the area following a pilot car. In both sections the white dust was so bad I couldn't see the road five feet in front of me. The actual road surface was slightly rough, but it didn't matter because we could only drive about 15 miles per hour anyway because of the dust. Because there is only traffic in one direction, you don't have to worry about rocks in the windshield. That was always the big fear about traveling on the Alaska Highway. One portion of the construction area went through a beautiful canyon and we were able to see a couple small herds of Stone
Sheep, a small relative of the Bighorn Sheep. Fortunately, this section was packed dirt without much dust so we got some good photos of the sheep. After the construction areas we stopped for lunch at the Toad Creek Lodge, about halfway to Laird Hot Springs. We had lunch in the lodge with a couple of other rigs from our caravan. We were amazed at the amount of dust on - and in - our rigs from driving through the construction areas. The back of our motorhome was completely white with dust, as is the car. The lunch at the lodge was great, Jackie had a buffalo burger! I bought a cool tee shirt and we hit the road again. On the way we did see our first caribou on the side of the road. About the size of an elk, but lighter in color with a different type of antlers.We arrived at our destination about 3:00 p.m. Tonight we are staying in one of the British Columbia Provincial Parks. Surprisingly, we found the park to be very nice - large sites in a very pretty woodsy area. We had no hookups at all, totally dry camping, but we were only here one night and we had made sure we came with empty waste tanks and plenty of water on board. One of the reasons our leaders decided to stay at this park is that it has some natural hot springs right inside the park boundaries. After we got settled in I put on my bathing suit and headed to the
springs. They were very nice - the park had built a wood walkway through the swamp to the springs, and then had wood steps going into the water. They had also put gravel on the bottom of the natural pools so it was very comfortable. At the spring end of the pool the water had to be at least 115 degrees. The further away from the source you went the cooler the water got. I stayed in the part that was probably about 107, what a regular hot tub would be. The water was slightly sulfur smelling, but not so bad that it was uncomfortable. Jackie didn't feel like going to the springs, so I was there with a couple of other folks from the caravan. After the hot springs I went back to the coach and we played a couple of games of cards before heading to bed. We didn't have a full travel meeting tonight because the mosquitoes were so bad in the park. You could hardly go outside without being swarmed, even with repellent on. Larry, or leader came around and just told us that we would be leaving the park tomorrow morning between 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. heading to Watson Lake, Yukon Territory (Y.T.)After arriving in Laird Hot Springs we learned that one couple from our group, Terry and Janis, had experienced major problems with their coach just before arriving at the park. They have an Tiffin Allegro with a Ford gas engine and they think that they may have broken a rod in the engine. They had just bought the coach new before the trip and it had less than 7,000 miles on it when it quit. We learn that they have been able to make arrangements to get towed from Laird Hot Springs into Whitehorse, Y.T. tomorrow morning. We will be heading to Whitehorse after one other stop. They hope to be able to get the problem fixed and rejoin the caravan later in the trip. We are all keeping our fingers crossed.
Saturday, July 18th - Day Four. We were up and out of the park about 9:00 and found that we were the last people out except for the Tailgunner who was not scheduled to leave until 10:00. We were driving only 135 miles today to Watson Lake, Y.T. Again, the road was pretty good. We didn't run into any major construction today. We have heard tales about the bad roads up in the Yukon and Alaska - so far, except for the construction areas yesterday, we have not experienced anything worse than what you see in California as far as roads. The frost heaves are generally just minor bumps. We have found that because of the bumps, the possibility of animals on the roads, and the hills and so forth, that we are only driving between 50 and 55 most of the time. This actually makes for very leisurely driving. I get a chance to enjoy the scenery for a change. There is very little traffic on the road, despite it being the only road in the area.
On this leg of the trip we ran into several herds of wild buffalo grazing along the road, and sometimes crossing the road. We got some good pictures. We also saw our
first grizzly bear on the side of the road. Much bigger than the black bears we have seen and a different color, more of a reddish blond color. Today we finally crossed from British Columbia into the Yukon Territory. We crossed the border a couple of times as the road zigzagged, but we finally came to the "official" welcome sign. We arrived in Watson Lake about 1:00 in the rain. This
was a pretty decent campground with pull through spots and full hookups. Watson Lake is our first town in the Yukon Territory and it is the home of the famous "Sign Post Forest." The Forest is just a block from our campground so several of us walk over to look at it
and post our caravan's sign. It is very hard to describe the sign post forest. It is a couple of acres of 8 ft. 4X4 posts with every type of sign you can think of. At last count there were over 64,000 individual signs in the forest. Larry put up a sign that had all the names of the folks on our caravan so we are now a part of the forest. Jackie and I have decided that we will put up our own sign when we come back through Watson Lake near the end of the caravan.Unfortunately, after arrival at the park we learned that another couple from our group, Dave and Connie, broke the springs on their fifth wheel and were going to be stuck in Watson Lake for at least three days while they wait to get it fixed. They hope to be able to get finished and rejoin the caravan in Whitehorse. We will be there for three days, so hopefully they can get the repairs made and get back on the caravan.
Our dinner tonight was at the RV park and was advertised to us as a "low country boil". It turns out that Steve and Betty, the couple with the Newell, are from Georgia and carry a huge pot and propane cooker with them. This is the couple that have been on a number of caravans. Dinner was held in a large tent near the office. When we get there we found a bunch of tables inside the tent with Georgia newspaper
set out as place mats and this huge pot boiling just outside the tent. Inside the pot are shrimp, sausage, white potatoes, sweet potatoes and corn on the cob. There must be 30 pounds of food in the pot. After we all get settled they strain the food, dump it out on a table, and let everyone go through and help themselves. The food was FANTASTIC and there was more than enough for everyone. Jackie and I both ate until we were well fed! One of the best meals we have had. After the meal we had a short travel brief for tomorrow's travel from Watson Lake, Y.T. to Teslin, Y.T. After that Jackie and I headed back to the coach, watched a little bit of TV (we had cable hookups at this park) and then headed off to bed ready to travel our next leg.Sunday, July 19th - Day Five. We were up and out of the park by about 9:15 again. It would be nice to be able to sleep in, but with these one day stops we don't get the chance. The drive from Watson Lake, Y.T. to Teslin, Y.T. was only 163 miles. The roads were good with few major bumps and no construction except for a couple of bridges where we were held up for only a couple minutes. Most of the trip is through forest, but we also had great views of the rivers and lakes that dot the landscape. About halfway through the drive we did see a large Bald Eagle. He was flying straight down the road in front of us, then landed near the shoulder. We had a really good view of him. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the camera up in time to get a photo. We didn't see any other animals the whole day - very disappointing. We saw a couple of places where there was piles of poop on the shoulder, but no animals. Probably either bison or some of the wild horses that inhabit the area.
Just before we get into Teslin, our stop for the night, we crossed over Teslin Lake on a long bridge. The bridge was built in the 40's and is the longest bridge on the Alaska highway. The park we are staying in tonight is pretty nice with pull-through
spots. We had water and electric, but no sewer or TV. We were only going to be there one night, so no big deal. We were in and settled by about 2:00 p.m., so we unhooked the car and drove around the area to do some sightseeing. I checked to see if there were any geocaches in the area and there were none. We went to the George Johnson Museum, which was located right in town. This was a very interesting stop. George Johnson was a Tlinket Indian who lived in Teslin. George happened to be a photographer, so he has photos of the people and activities in the area from about 1902 well into the 1950's. He was a very successful trapper and brought the first automobile into the area in 1928. There were no roads anywhere, he had the car brought in by boat. He used it primarily in the winter when Teslin Lake froze and he was able to drive on the ice and service his traps. The lake is 68 miles long and a couple miles wide, so he had a huge road in the winter. There were no real roads in this area until the Alaska Highway came through in 1942.After the museum we drove about 6 miles North of town on the highway to visit the site of the infamous Mukluck Annie's Almost anyone I have talked to about travel to Alaska has mentioned Mukluck Annie's They had a restaurant that served a salmon bake - if you ate in the restaurant you could stay in the RV park for free. (without electric, that was extra) You also got a free RV wash. Unfortunately, we found the place closed. The story we heard from our Wagonmaster was that the owner was an older lady who finally had to give the place up. After a little touring of the town we headed back to the coach to rest for tomorrow's trip.
Monday, July 20 - Day Six. Today we left Teslin for Whitehorse, Y.T. The trip was only about 106 miles so we expected to get in early. We got out of the park in Teslin about 9:30 and headed North. This was a very easy drive but again, we didn't see any animals. We did see at least a half dozen hardy souls on bicycles, most headed South. I would imagine that it takes a long time to do the Alaska Highway on a bike, so they probably get an early start. We have also seen a lot of motorcycles on the highway. I guess it would be a great adventure, but we sure feel sorry for the cyclists, both types, when it is raining. Not my cup of tea. We got into Whitehorse about 1:00 p.m. and parked pretty quickly after getting some fuel. The fuel island is right in the middle of the RV park so you can just stop there as you pull into the park. The spots are a little tight, but we were able to get all the slides out and we have full hookups, including TV and Internet. We are going to be here for three days. Yea! This is the first stop on the trip that is not a one night stand. The original plan was for us to have a dinner in the rec room at the park, however, after everyone got in the Wagonmaster told us that the dinner was canceled because someone else had the room. The dinner was rescheduled for Wednesday night, our last night here.
Since we had the rest of the day free, we downloaded some caches and went geocaching for the first time in nearly a week. We were able to find five caches in a couple hours and saw some interesting places in Whitehorse. Whitehorse is the capital of the Yukon Territory and its largest city, with about 25,000 people. The book said that two-thirds of the population of the Yukon lives in Whitehorse. There is a really cute old-timey downtown area along Main Street that looks like it would be fun to explore. One of the caches was by the airport and there was a 737 sitting at
the gate, so we know they have major air service. They also have what they claim to be the world's biggest wind vane. They have an old DC-3 mounted on a pole and it swivels with the wind. We also located the Elks Lodge, right in the downtown area, and it appears that they have a bar. We didn't have time to stop there today because we had made arrangements to meet with some members of our group at Klondike Salmon and Ribs, a pretty well known restaurant in Whitehorse. I had the fish and chips which was huge and very good. Jackie was not too hungry and had a bowl of Halibut chowder, which she said was tasty. The menu was interesting in that they had some unusual dishes. They had Caribou stew, Musk Ox stroganoff, and a couple of other items not seen on the average restaurant menu. After dinner we headed back to the coach to relax. Tomorrow we have to be up and ready at 8:30 for a bus tour of Whitehorse. Then for tomorrow night we have tickets to go to a follies-type show in town. They keep you busy on these caravans. We hit the bed about 11:00 p.m., pretty much our normal time - it is still daylight outside! We figure that right now we have about 5 hours a night of darkness. The sun didn't go down below the horizon tonight until about 10:00. p.m.Tuesday, July 21 - Day Seven. Even though today was not a travel day we still have to roll out of bed early because we had an 8:30 a.m. bus tour of Whitehorse. Our first stop was a bluff overlooking the Yukon River where we took some group photos. The people from our caravan were the only ones on the bus, so the bus driver was pretty open to whatever we wanted to do. Our next stop was the Whitehorse fish ladder. There is a dam on the Yukon River just South of Whitehorse which provides electrical power for the surrounding region. This is the only dam on the Yukon, and it is 3,000 miles from the mouth of the river in the Bering Sea. None the less, there are still some salmon that swim all the way up to rivers and creeks upstream from the where the dam is. In order for these salmon to get past the dam, there has to be a fish ladder. The Canadian government has on-site biologists who count the fish - there are actually very few, less than a thousand per year, that come up this far. We didn't see any salmon in the ladder because they are not due for another couple of weeks. Jackie wanted to ask the biologist how the salmon can climb the ladder without thumbs.
Our next stop on the tour was the SS Klondike, a restored stern wheeler riverboat which is now a museum. The Klondike was built in 1921 and is nearly 300 feet long.
It ran aground and partially sunk in 1935, but the upper deck works and machinery were salvaged and the ship was rebuilt and relaunched in 1937. It ran multiple trips up and down the Yukon River,
from Whitehorse to Dawson City every summer until 1955 when the new Alaskan Highway put the riverboats out of business. In the 60's the City of Whitehorse brought the boat from the boat yards, where it had languished since '55, to the downtown area where it was restored as a museum. We spent about an hour touring the boat - it was very interesting. There were several riverboats on the Yukon, but the Klondike was the largest. After the Klondike tour we stopped briefly at the Whitehorse visitor center and then took a short driving tour of Whitehorse.After the the bus dropped us off back at the RV park we decided to go spend the afternoon in Whitehorse just exploring. We were scheduled to attend a show downtown at 8:00 p.m., so we thought we would spend the day in town and just meet the group there. We spent a couple of hours walking around on Main Street looking in the various shops and then did some driving around the town, looking at the various neighborhoods. We also went out and found one more geocache to add to our total. About 4:00 we went by the Whitehorse Elks Lodge and visited the bar - yes, this one had a bar. There were two other people in the bar, besides the bartender. One of them was the Secretary of the Lodge and we got to talking to him about the Lodge. He told us there are 32 members of the Lodge! The only way the Lodge can stay open is their bingo hall - they have bingo six days a week in the summer and have eight sessions per week in the winter. He also told us that Whitehorse has the only Elks Lodge in the Yukon Territory. We did manage to get a nice pin from the lodge. After the Elks we went by the Royal Canadian Legion, also located right in downtown Whitehorse. This was probably the most fun Legion we have been in since coming into Canada. We walked in the door and there were about eight people sitting around a big table drinking. One of the guys at the table told us that it was the bullshit table and to sit down and make ourselves comfortable. We sat down and visited with a bunch of folks. Jackie got to talking to one middle aged lady who it turns out is active duty Canadian military home on leave. She is in the medical corps and due to go back to Afghanistan in October. Jackie said that she reminded her of her friend Julie from Sacramento. We had a couple of drinks and had a great time. Unfortunately, they didn't have a branch pin for our banner.
After the Legion we went to a local Mexican restaurant, Sam & Andy's, which is new in town and had been recommended by the gal Jackie had been talking to in the Legion. We got there about 6:00 and there weren't too many people there. We ordered a drink and some calamari, which came pretty quickly. We then ordered dinner, steak and chicken fajitas for two. Time went by, the place started filling up and pretty soon we noticed that some people who had come in long after us were getting food and we didn't have any yet. After about 45 minutes we asked the waitress how long our food was going to be. She said she'd check, and when she came back she was all flustered and told us she had forgotten to put our order in! After another 20 minutes she finally brought the food out, and it was just chicken - no steak fajitas. Although the food was not too bad, it certainly wasn't good enough to offset the incredibly poor service. At least they did take the appetizer and one of Jackie's drinks off of the bill. We wouldn't recommend Sam & Andy's.
We managed to finish dinner just in time to get over to the hotel where we were meeting the rest of our group for the show. The show is called the Frantic Follies and it is an old-time vaudeville show of the type that would have been popular in
the late 1800's when the Yukon gold rush was on. Nearly all of the players were locals and a couple of them were still in high school. It turns out they were very entertaining, if a little corney sometimes. They had some Cancan dancers, played and sang some old songs, and had some hysterically funny comedy skits. A couple of them involved bringing audience members up to the stage, and one them picked Jackie, who happened to be sitting in an aisle seat. They put her in a chair on stage while a couple of the
performers sang a love song to her. She went along with the gag perfectly and the audience loved the act. The show lasted a couple hours and was very good. I don't know what the cost is, because it was included as part of our tour, but I would recommend it if you find yourself in Whitehorse with an open evening. We got out of the show at 10:15 p.m. and the sun had just gone down. It was still light enough that I drove back to the RV park without having to use my headlights!Although we have one more day in Whitehorse, this was the end of the first week of our caravan. I will be posting the second week of our adventures in about seven days, providing we have decent Internet. Until then, peace and love!
