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| Co-pilot. Bodie, a great traveling dog |
The Richardson Highway, Back on the ALCAN, our Atlin Side Trip, the Cassiar and the Beautiful Provincial Parks of BC - July 9 - July 16, 2016
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| Oh my, we are back at it again. |
Moon Lake State Rec Area - Alaska Highway near Tanacross - North of Tok
July 9 - ERIN’s Birthday!!!!
What a great campground. From 17 sites all along Moon lake, there are 2 Airstreams Here! Us and J&B. We went swimming in the lake and had a nice dinner outside with minimal mosquitos. Pretty nice and will be hard to beat this place. We are hopeful that Bodie will be totally exhausted tonight as he swam for his ball for at least 2 hours.
Moon Lake was the color of muskeg from all the roads, which is essentially the color of dirt. But it was rather nice and refreshing for a swim in the rain. It was just a spectacular lake with no one around but a big, fat marmot that hung out by the bathroom. Sun still never sets, but we did see a beautiful attempt at the sun going down around 11:30…it’s still so weird. I miss seeing the moon and the stars and just plain old DARKNESS. A great thunder and lightening storm with the rain just coming down hard on the aluminum.
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| Sunset at 11:30 pm (still never gets really dark) |
Lake Creek Yukon Govt. Camp - Kluane National Park, the Yukon
July 10
Back in Canada! You betcha and our border crossing was quite easy. The border patrol was like a robot programmed to ask the “questions.” No animation on his face in the least bit. Don’t try and make them laugh, smile or even grimace. All business.
Continuing south on the Alaska Highway through the beautiful Kluane National park. Mountains surrounding us on all sides. Crappy road with lots of frost heaves and gravel patches, but we are rather used to it now. Airstream and Truck are looking pretty bad. Time for a wash soon.
Lake Creek campground was another good one for sure. Camped alongside the lake and had another nice swim in a rather interesting color lake. We had a good thunder/lightening storm and both agreed how nice it was to be in the Airstream and not our little tents in the Sierra’s. We must be getting old…oh well. There’s a time for everything. These Yukon camps have free wood so we made a fire in the wood burning stove and our fire pit, just because we could and because Kevin is a fire craving kind of guy! The Creek (hah! looked like a wild river) was too rough for us to swim, but that didn’t stop Bodie from having a grand time. Wet, smelly dog. Lovely. Gave him a bath with the outdoor shower in a complete downpour of rain.
Off tomorrow to Whitehorse, again. We will stay at the same place as it was the best of anything in Whitehorse.
Whitehorse, the Yukon
July 11
Stayed at Big Country RV park again, but this time had a really crappy site. Too close to our neighbors. Oh well, we are only here for 1 night. Doing laundry and cleaning up the inside of the trailer a bit. We are up to about 9 popped rivets, 3 closet doors needing some good repair, and multiple hinges that are always needing tightening. Man…this road is something else. Truly the worst part of our drive was today from Haines Junction to Whitehorse. WOW..you can shake some fillings out of your teeth on this bad boy.
Was well worth the stay as I we went for a couple of great hikes in Miles Canyon and had Sushi at the same restaurant we had went to more than a month ago on our way up North. Laundry all done, airstream all put back together and off we go for more of our crazy adventure.
Atlin, BC
July 12
I had this idea of a side trip to
Atlin. Why? I’m not sure. I had read that it was the “Switzerland of the North,” so why not. It did’t look too far off the highway. Final last words. Long drive in some pretty nasty weather to a very interesting town. Nothing there but a very beautiful lake. Lake Atlin. There was only 1 campground in the town (which consists of 4 streets and really no business’, restaurants, nothing). Now this campground I can’t even explain, so I will just leave it at that. We did meet some FISH dudes that use the lil red plane to go out and get all sorts of fish and then bring them back into Atlin. We bought some nice scallops, shrimp, crab cakes and smoked salmon.
Kevin is pretty mad all day about this little side trip. Again, I will just leave it at that. We were happy to see Atlin in our rear view mirror the next morning, early.
Boya Lake Provincial Park, BC - the Cassiar Highway
Well we are on the Cassiar. This highway is a total of 450 miles of extremely scenic landscape. This highway connects British Columbia to the Alaska highway in the Yukon. We have heard lots of stories about this highway along our travels, so we shall see. Narrow, winding, not paved, gravel, etc. Lots of bears. We left Whitehorse traveling East towards Watson Lake where we dropped South on the Cassiar. So far so good, bit of gravel patches, very narrow, not many cars, but not too bad, yet. We had about 5 hours of driving to get to the Cassiar, so we stopped about 60 miles into it at Boya Lake PP.
Wow. Great provincial park. Hands down in the top 5! The campsites sit along the lakeside. The lake is an amazing color that none of my photo’s really captured. A blue-green, emerald type of lake but with such clarity. We immediately went swimming even with the threat of yet, another, rain storm. Drinks at lakeside, swimming and a nice BBQ completed our evening. I made brownies after dinner and passed them out to our nearest neighbors, a nice couple from Switzerland and some Germans (they are everywhere!). This spot will be missed but remembered fondly.
Meziadin Lake Provincial Park, BC - the Cassiar Highway
July 14
Ok. Beautiful spot. Bit crowded but the problem here is a little BLACK GNAT. OMG. It is awful and there are lots of them. Awful enough that we can’t let the poor dog out and to be outside we had to swim in the lake to keep from being bitten. It’s icky. Poor Bodie. A few benadryl and he feels no pain.
Gorgeous drive today on the Southern section of the Cassiar. It’s getting even better. We saw a little red fox this morning run across us with his “breakfast” in his mouth. Beautiful red fox with a white tipped tail. The road is getting better and better, but still feels like a paved Forest Service Road. Continues as narrow as can be through really thick forests. Near the end of our driving day, the road finally had a medium line painted on it.
Tomorrow we will finish the Cassiar and begin the Yellowhead Highway dropping us further southeast towards Prince George and then heading directly south towards the border. Few more days and we will be back in the lower 48! Hard to believe.
There is absolutely NO cell coverage or internet anywhere along the 450 miles of the Cassiar. I have missed checking in with my children and my mom. Hope all is well.
Beaumont Provincial Park, BC - the Yellowhead Highway
July 15
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| Fort Fraser |
Camped along Fraser Lake at the site of the original Fort Fraser. Was a bit of a run down memory lane as we read the book
ASTORIA while I hiked the JMT a few years back. Kinda fun to know a little bit more about Capt. Fraser and all his explorations, and here we are! Once again, extremely nice campground. We are nestled among a big, thick strand of aspens and cottonwoods. The lake is quite huge, goes on forever, but also doesn’t seem to ever get deep? We walked out for at least a 1/4 mile with the water level only reaching our knees. Still went in and it was great exercise for Bodie as it was just deep enough for him to swim along.
Todays road trip took us off the Cassiar and on to the Yellowhead. Such a nice highway. Can hardly believe there are no gravel sections, pilot cars, red flags, frost heaves, etc. The most northerly section was quite scenic as we passed through some very high mountain ranges and thick forests. Lots of Blue Spruce, aspens and cottonwoods. Little towns dot the way and they each have a bit of historic interest. We had an interesting conversation at the “sani-dump” in Hazleton. So this lady was coming back to Hazleton for her high school reunion. She grew up in this little historic town and was telling us some great stories. Her father was a lumberjack. He lived with his 7 children and wife on a cedar raft floating down the Babine river. He actually built a small house on top of the floating raft. What the heck? She was a hoot and Kevin and I could have listened to her stories all day long. Unfortunately, hanging out at a sami-dump is really not the greatest place to chat.
We definitely feel like we are back in civilization. Just the road conditions alone are super nice. The Canadians really are clean and neat and tidy. Each of these little towns has a lovely Visitor Center (log cabin style) with Canadians sharing their great hospitality.
Skihist Provincial Park, BC - Canada Highway 1
July 16
Drove almost the entire section of the Yellowhead Highway today past Cache Creek into the Thompson River valley. The Valley of trains and railroad tunnels. The tunnels weave in and out of the Thompson river and the Fraser river through a series of very cool tunnels. It is quite a scene.
Our campsite was quite lovely, unlike any of the other PP's we weren't on a lake today, but instead in the middle of a forest that had great views below to the Fraser River and the railcars. It is the base camp for many of the trailheads that go out in this beautiful forested canyon. Just around our campground, I counted 8 trailheads. It rained slightly with lots of thunder and lightening. BBQ'd under the awning which was really nice. No bugs. :) Took Bodie on a nice forest walk with my Bear Spray in hand.
Tomorrow we head towards our border crossing. Sad but also so excited to get home.
After a stunning, scenic drive from the Thompson Valley down through a majestic canyon and a series of very cool tunnels, we arrive in Abbottsford at the US Border Crossing. We have had NO issues getting into Canada, nor Alaska (btw...also part of the US, although they don't really want to believe that!). Our posted wait when we cued up was 10 minutes. Not bad. Well, 10 min turned into 1 hour of waiting in line, then we turned that 1 hour into 2 1/2 hours of craziness. At the check point we were greeted by Mr. Nasty and it never got any better. From the moment we said, "hi" it went downhill. We were drilled with questions, remarks about all the "wrong" things we had going for us. For example, our bike rack was covering a bit of our back license plate. BAD. We didn't have our Trailer registration on hand, immediately. BAD. Mr. Nasty could not see Bodie's rabies vaccination on his medical clearance records. BAD. (I asked him if he wanted me to show him where it was) BAD. So, after him pondering for a few minutes, staring into space, he informed us to pull over into the "inspection" station. We were told we must put Bodie into the Customs kennel and both of us needed to enter the Inspection station. We sat until we were called and then attempted to declare everything I could possibly remember was in our fridge and gifts and etc, etc. Can you list ALL the things in your refrigerator?? I tried. Believe me. I tried. Then there was the stump issue. OMG. "No Sir, we do not have any firewood, oh well, we do have a stump." Why do we have a stump. It was just a perfect stump. Level and just the right height for wood chopping. It was really perfect. So after explaining this to Mr. Nasty II, he told us we would need to take it back to Canada. Ok. How do we do that? Apparently, there is a Canadian man on the other side of the border that takes all these crazy American's wood. Ok. So it's a bit heavy and it's a bit of a walk back to Canada. Along comes the dolly to make the "Walk of Shame." But first we must sit tight until they go through our Airstream and Truck and allow the drug dog to go through everything. We wait. Finally, the Nasty people return with not only my tomatoes, but OMG, AVOCADO's. Oops. Forgot to declare those. :( Bad news. There is a $350 fine for undeclared items. He waits for a bit until we are sick to our stomachs and then informs us that since this is our first inspection, he will let us go without the fine. So Mr. Nasty ll is a ok. Please just let us go now. I want my dog out and want to go home. 
We finally arrive in Washington and immediately begin to relax. We are homeward bound and to boot, this 1000 Trails is our most FAVORITE 1000 trails yet. We are nestled among big trees, all alone with a little 1mile walk through a thick forest right next to us (which no one has used but us in 2 days!)
