Trip log: RV Trip to Alaska 2014 |
|
5/18/2014 Day 11 Lac la Hoche to Beaumont Provincial Park, BC; 265 MI It didn’t stop raining until about 3 AM last night, and then was undecided about it as we drove north, requiring wipers intermittently all the way to Williams Lake. At Prince George the sun came out for the first time in two days. The road from Lac la Hoche to Prince George is excellent with about 30% either 4-lane or passing lane and the rest wide 2-lane, smooth, well marked, few grades worth mentioning. West from PG on 16 is similar, though a little rough in spots. Miles so far: 2100 at 8.23 MPG.
|
|
5/22/2014 Day 15 Dease Lake to Watson Lake, BC; 180 miles From about 20 miles north of Dease Lake Campground in BC to the junction of the Alaska Highway west of Watson Lake in Yukon, the Cassiar Highway lived up to its reputation in the Milepost: narrow, rough and slow, no lane stripes and lots of potholes and frost heaves. We saw a black bear within 15 minutes of leaving, then a mama with two cubs a little further on. None stood still for photos. No moose, no caribou.
At Watson Lake we stopped for fuel (naturally) and the Visitors Center, then went to the Northern Lights Center and saw the movie about the Aurora Borealis and Black Holes. The one about black holes was a little woo-woo. Bought propane for the first time this trip—40 liters, $35. Not bad considering the refrigerator runs on propane and we’ve been using the hot water heater and the furnace with abandon.
Drove 3 miles west of Watson Lake to the Watson Lake Campground, then another 3 miles on gravel road off the highway where we got a pull-through site for $12 CDN. Nobody else here. I don’t think I have ever seen a dirtier Jeep or RV. We HAVE to find a car wash in Whitehorse! (But we didn’t.) |
|
5/20/2014 Day 13 Seeley Lake to Stewart, BC; 153 miles
The Cassiar Highway, Canada #37, takes off north from Canada #16 which continues on west to Prince Rupert. At about 100 miles north, you take the spur road 37A west 40 miles down to Stewart/Hyder. The elevation at Prince George was about 2500 feet; at the Seely Lake campground last night it was about 1300 and you descend to sea level at Stewart. The road is good and a main attraction, Bear Glacier, is about half the way down on the left side, just 100 yards from the highway, fronted by a small lake formed by the glacial melt. It’s about as up close and personal as you can get to a glacier. Dozens of waterfalls beginning at over 5000 feet and cascading down near vertical cliffs are found all along the road.
Alaska’s southeast panhandle, just called “Southeast” by native Alaskans, extends down a 150-mile wide strip along British Columbia’s western edge. The foot of the panhandle and the boundary between BC and Alaska runs up the center of the Portland Canal, a fjord beginning at Dixon Entrance on the Pacific Ocean and extending in an arc northeast to north about 90 miles to the two towns of Hyder, Alaska and Stewart, British Columbia.
The towns are 2 miles apart, and the only way to get to Hyder by land is through Stewart. Stewart has a population of about 500 while Hyder has maybe 100, most of whom seem to be hyding. If you go to Hyder, you have to go through Canadian Customs and show your passport to get back into Stewart, even if, like we did, you take a picture of the Welcome to Hyder sign, make a U-turn and come back out. There is a gas station in Stewart and gas is $1.51/liter for regular, a little higher than on the main route. |
|
5/21/2014 Day 14 Stewart to Dease Lake, BC; 235 miles We got back on the road at 8 AM and rejoined the Cassiar Highway north at the Meziadin Junction. For all the warnings in Milepost about the Cassiar – narrow, no shoulders, steep drop-offs at the edge – it is really a great highway. It is no worse than most of the 2-lane country roads anywhere in the lower 48. From about the mid-point on to Dease Lake it is a bit rougher with the occasional small pothole and no lane striping, but it is, for the most part a 55 MPH road all the way. It’s also about 100 miles shorter than highway 97 from Prince George to Watson Lake and with much less traffic. You can drive for an hour and never see another car. |
|
Dease Lake Lions Campground |
|
Bear Glacier near Stewart |
|
Entrance to ‘KSAN Village, New Hazleton, BC |
|
Black Bear along the Cassiar Highway |
|
So we took our time and got on the road a little after 8 with a short day ahead, arriving at Seely Lake Provincial Park around 1 PM. We took a Jeep excursion back 6 miles east into New Hazleton where we crossed the Hagwilget suspension bridge, a single-track open mesh floor bridge that hovers 260 feet above the Bulkley River. The Bulkley and the Skeena Rivers join here to form one huge river, still the Skeena. We visited the ‘KSAN village museum, a faux village emulating those that existed in this area 200 years ago.
This is called the Yellowknife Highway, Canada #16. Moose continue to be touted as a roadside attraction on the yellow road signs, but no moose. Finally saw a leaping stag, though, leaping across the road in front of us. So that promise has been fulfilled, albeit late. Leaping stag signs began appearing over 1000 miles ago. Actually it was a leaping doe, but close enough.
So far we have seen few RV adventurers from outside BC. The campgrounds contain mostly Canadians taking short vacations. Met one fellow in a similar coach to ours who was headed north and tonight a similar one with California plates came into the campground.
Gas prices had gotten steadily lower from Victoria to Prince George, bottoming out at about $1.36/liter CDN. Now they are back up above 1.40, but still not as high as Victoria. We have spent just over $1000 on fuel so far this trip. |
|
A dearth of animals so far despite many yellow warning signs along the road. No bears, no moose, no caribou, an occasional deer. I saw the first caribou road sign today. The moose on the moose signs looks very downtrodden; the caribou is more perky, more self-assured. The leaping stag sign is false advertising; so far no leaping stags. We hope this changes as we get closer to Stewart which is supposed to be a major bear center.
Tonight’s stay is at Beaumont Provincial Park, just 85 miles west of Prince George. It has no hookups, but has water and a dump site. We got the absolute last (or maybe next to last) site in the park, number 11, for $16. The lake is big enough for power boats and water skiing.
The dump site in Lac la Hoche this morning was closed when we left at about 6:30. We dumped at another site further up the road, and then figured out that they close the dump sites in the Provincial parks at night and don’t open them until 7 AM. This is a mystery to us. Why close the dump site? In some cases they also lock the entry gate from 11 PM until 7 AM. Also, many of the Provincial parks have a $5 fee for dumping with a pay lock over the drain – except the one we chose this morning had a broken lock and was free. |
|
An interesting side effect with the GPS: I set the waypoint for Watson Lake, Yukon, which was about 350 miles north on the Cassiar. The GPS showed a total distance of 1400 miles. It wanted us to go all the way back to Prince George and up highway 97. I finally figured out that it thinks the Cassiar is unpaved—which it was until a few years ago–and the GPS preferences were set to exclude unpaved roads. Just north of the Meziadin Junction we saw our first smallish black bear happily munching dandelions right at the edge of the road. We came upon him so fast I didn’t have a chance with the camera, but just before Bell 2 Crossing we saw another, slightly larger, crossing in front of us and I got a rather poor movie of him disappearing into the bushes.
We stopped for the night at a tiny campground called Dease Lake Lions Campground with 16 primitive sites just 6 miles south of Dease Lake for $10. A few miles prior to that we saw a herd of 6 or 8 cow caribou. We’re back at about 3500 feet and all the lakes are still iced over. Gas has gotten up to $1.57/liter or about $5.95/gallon US. |
|
We are early. The season really hasn’t started here yet. The Stewart town campground is not open yet, but the private Bear River RV Park is, so we stayed there at $48/night with full hookups, cable TV, laundry and wi-fi facilities. Not a bad deal. This is our first commercial RV Park on this trip and our first full hookups since we entered Canada. Donna did laundry and got us re-equipped for the next couple of weeks.
We wanted to go up the 23-mile road from Hyder to Salmon Glacier, but according to the locals, the road is closed still with 6-feet of snow. We did drive up as far as the Fish Creek Wildlife Observation Area bear viewing platform about 3 miles out of Hyder. No bears, of course, because the salmon haven’t arrived yet, but the viewing platform is impressive, extending 600 feet along the creekside and elevated so the bears can walk under it.
There is a Portland Canal/Stewart Yacht Club. The tide was out and all the boats—about six of them—were sitting in the mud. It’s about a 25 foot tide swing here, so later on everything was floating again. The logging trucks bring their loads down to the Canal and float them out to ships or log tows for transport south. |
|
5/19/2014 Day 12 Beaumont Provincial Park to Seely Lake Provincial Park; 180 Miles
Hotcakes and eggs this morning, sans generator, which is deemed (by this campground management) too intrusive to late sleepers until 9 AM, notwithstanding the proximity to the noisy highway and the even noisier railroad tracks. But by fitting the small square griddle next to the even smaller round egg pan on the stove, we managed to bring it all off. The electric Cuisinart Griddler would have made things simpler had we had an abundance of power, and we could have even done bacon. This is what roughing it is like; you have to make sacrifices. |