NORTH TO ALASKA - DAYs 75 & 76 - A MOOSE, A BEAR, STARTING THE CASSIAR HIGHWAY TO DEASE LAKE

We were so sad to leave the campground! We are at Morley Lake in The Yukon Territory of Canada. If you read my last blog, you will know that it has become my most absolute favorite campsite so far of this entire trip.

https://www.sitesandtrailsbc.ca/Mobile/Search/search-result.aspx?site=REC0562&districtCode=RDKM&type=Site

But it was going to rain, rain, rain for the next 2 to 3 days. And the road going in here was very steep narrow and downhill just two tracks of dirt and mud through the woods. Getting back up was going to be difficult if we were going to have a couple days of rain. Our motorhome is not four-wheel drive, and I highly doubt a tow truck will come down there to haul us out of the mud if we got stuck. 

It is best if one only camped there on dry weather days or they had a four-wheel drive truck to haul their butts out.

I sat in the morning in my "office" to finish up a blog post and get a few photos organized. I was kind of stalling, I really didn't want to leave.

But eventually, we got packed up and hit the road. Surprisingly, we made it out pretty well through the woods. The road was worse the day before when we arrived, because it had been raining for 2 days prior.  But it had dried out some overnight and the biggest mud holes had diminished in size. So we really didn't have any problem getting out. 

We turned towards the southeast and continued on the Alcan Highway.  

We had a few sections of some construction and some gravel. There's only a little window of time to get the roadwork done, so stopping or slowing down for construction is the norm in Canada and Alaska both. 

We were heading along on a paved portion when suddenly we spotted a moose!!!!  

Now, I KNOW I took photos of it with my big camera. Good sharp clear photos. Because right after it happened, I snapped a picture of the back screen of my big camera with my cell phone just to send it to my friends Linda and Rosie. But darned if I can find the good photos on the SD card within the camera itself? I have looked and looked. 

The next best thing is to take still shots off the video that was running at the same time through the dash camera. So these are the only shots we got of the moose other than the one of the back of my camera up above.

  

I know they are not very clear, nor are they very detailed. But they are definitely a moose and we definitely saw it.

I sure wish I knew where the other photos from the big camera were...  If I do find them somewhere, I will upload them here for a future viewing.

We traveled along for about another 50 miles or so, and happened upon our next little bit of wildlife for the morning. It was our chance to see a black bear! He was very busy chomping along something in the grass and really didn't even pay attention to us. We had pulled over on the opposite side of the road and I was snapping some photos through the open window. We were safe. The only time he ever looked up was if a semi truck was coming!  Otherwise he wasn't even bothered to look at anybody or anything going past.

At one point he did look up (right after another semi went past) and I was zoomed in enough to grab this picture of him.  The video link down below to the YouTube shows the actual footage we were filming of him while I kept snapping photos. 

Isn't he cute?

But I sure don't think I'd want to run across him in the woods somewhere...

We continued on the Alcan Highway a bit further. The road weaves in and out between British Columbia and the Yukon a couple of times before it finally reaches an intersection called Junction 37.  This is important because it's the start of the Cassiar Highway. This is where you have to make "the decision" if you're going to continue back home on the Alcan or if you're going to go down on the Cassiar.  

So we were choosing to take the darker blue route to the west (The Cassiar Highway) rather than the lighter blue route to the east (The Alcan a.k.a Alaskan Highway). 

Since we had come up on the Alcan, it made sense for us to go back on the Cassiar and see something different.

But also it is a very important gas station stop here for fuel if you're going to go on the Cassiar because the next station is quite a distance down at Dease Lake. 

Right at the corner, we stopped for a fuel up.  The owner, Dan, was quite an interesting fellow to chat with.  Boy oh boy, does he know his fishing. He also makes his own fishing lures and sells them along with a lot of good advice.

He has three old dogs who will welcome you at the doorway and check you over just in case you might have some treats in your pockets.  I passed the test.

After we fueled up, we found out that he no longer sells propane. So we knew we had to pick that up further down the way. But we were at still approximately half a tank so that was okay. 

NOW IT WAS TIME TO START THE CASSIAR HIGHWAY. IT FEELS LIKE WE ARE NOW GOING "HOME"!

We drove about 2 miles further down the road to where it crossed the final time from the Yukon into British Columbia. It was time to say goodbye to the Yukon, and set our sights on traveling further south. See the Yukon sign over our shoulders?

We did pose at the British Columbia sign and also put our little sticker in a prominent spot. It was like we were closing a chapter of our travels by leaving the Yukon, and beginning the next leg of our journey through British Columbia.

The weather here was cold, even though the sun was shining. Further south of us they had actually had snow the night before and the temperatures were down around 32. The days were only getting up in the '50s, maybe. Remember, this is the middle of July!  The elevations are only in the 2000 to 3000 ft range. But almost every mountain has snow on top of it.

The skies were clearing up a bit where we were actually getting some sunshine as we headed south. It felt pretty good shining in on us as we traveled southward.

The Cassiar Highway was undergoing a major overhaul. Many sections are already done and they are smooth as a ribbon of pavement cruising along over the hills and around the curves. It was such an amazing pleasure to drive on. It was like a complete contrast to what we had been experiencing on the way up to Alaska. This was like the icing on the cake, or like I said it was our "reward" for enduring all the rough rugged travel going north. Now it was time to enjoy our southern trek home.

Something else we had noticed was an interesting form of graffiti. It seems that the young people, or perhaps people in love, seem to take it upon themselves to make a declaration publicly along the road sides. What they do is that they gather rocks. And they arrange those rocks into letters to spell out the name of their beloved. They arrange them into the dirt banks on each side of the road. We saw quite a few messages of who loves who, with big hearts or silly designs...

Somewhere just initials like this:

And others were full names encircled by a heart shape:

We noticed some had even taken the time to paint the rocks to make them stand out! Can you imagine? Here is Willy, thinking, "I will show Fran that I really love her, by taking some paint out on the side of the highway and painting a bunch of rocks. Then, after they dry, I will arrange the rocks into her name and my name. That will show her that I truly love her!" 

Anyhow,  We moved on further down the Cassiar, marveling at what was happening around each turn and over each hill.

I took 70 million gazillion photos, but here are just a few:

The snow-capped mountains look frosty and cold, and many of the streams and lakes running down from them are just as icy cold.

Of course, we will run into a few sections of construction. Not every segment is completed yet. But each section was noted with large billboards of what was going on and when. Once each section was completed a big red and white banner board was diagonally hammered across it saying COMPLETED.  I bet that sure felt good for the road crews to do that. 

We did wait in one section quite a while for a pilot car to come. This was getting late, about 6:30 p.m. But they were still working and we had to wait for the pilot car to come and get us. It's the only way to get safely through a construction zone when there is such large equipment moving around. They are busy and not looking for everyday traffic coming from either direction.

Soon we were escorted through and back on our way. We wanted to make it down to Dease Lake for the night. We called at the Brown Bird RV Park in that small crossroads to ask if they had any open sites or if we needed to make a reservation? She said no problem at all, just come, and drive right in. She felt I should make it there by 7:00 p.m., but that was before we got stopped waiting for the pilot car. Otherwise, it was fine with her to just pull in and take a site for the night. We could settle up in the morning at the registration office. How nice was that? 

We made it down to Brown Bird RV Park (previously called Dease Lake RV Park) just as the office was registering two or three other latecomers, so she was still open.  We got assigned a campsite for two nights with full hookups. We wanted to hole up here for the rain and the storms going overhead. We also wanted to catch up on the laundry, and resupply some things at the small gas station / grocery store at the crossroads in town. 

The RV park was not anything very special, nor anything fancy or manicured or landscaped. It was a gravel lot with posts that had power and water. Some of those campsites had sewer as well. It was actually a place that a lot of the construction workers were living in their RVs while they worked just down the road. They would leave early in the morning at 6:00 a.m. with their diesel trucks rumbling their way out of the RV park. But you can't fault them for it, they need to get to work and fix the roads that we all love to drive on. 

So we have to appreciate them for what they are doing too. And then roll back over, smiling, and go back to sleep for a while.

Like I said, it wasn't anything fancy. The showers cost four quarters for a quick shower. We prefer to shower within our own motorhome and use the water hookup right there at the campsite. There is a laundry facility with reasonably priced washers and dryers, I think it was about $1.25 to wash and $1.50 to dry. We were able to catch up all of our laundry, which was very nice. 

The cost of the campsite was $55 a night Canadian currency, which after the exchange rate on our American Express card converts down to $40.23 US.

We had traveled over our 200 mile limit today. Generally we try to go less than 200 miles and take a break and take it easy. But because we wanted to get somewhere that we could run electric heat for the night and be comfortable and catch up laundry, we actually drove 273 miles.  

So that meant Steve would have a well-deserved beer once we got parked and leveled and plugged in.

  

This has become one of his favorites from Canada, Uncle Dunkle beer which is a Bavarian beer from the Denali Brewing Company in Talkeetna, Alaska. It must be a favorite in the region because we found it in almost every store.

Because of our long day driving, I made up a very easy dinner with some leftover ground beef and grilled chicken, assembled into tacos. I whipped up all of our makings and we put together our meal quickly.  I am really, really liking my Ulu knife that I bought in Trapper Creek, Alaska.  It is so easy to rock the little knife back and forth to chop up things like onions and lettuce and tomatoes.  I actually like it so much that now I ordered one to be sent to home for my kitchen at the house. I will keep this one in the motorhome.

The next morning, the rain let up enough that we could take little Nicholas out to the corner of the RV park. Look what they had in store for him! 

I first gave him a lesson on how to read each letter on the sign so he knows what D O G  P A R K means. 

He had so much fun running around. They had a couple things in there like this tire that he kept running through the middle of. There was a pretend fire hydrant that was full of interesting smells. We ran him around before the big dark cloud looming ahead started sprinkling on us. So we had to leave and go back inside.

We holed up here at Dease Lake in the RV park for two nights. It rained most of the while, just like they said it would. Although I loved Morley Lake so much, I am glad that we were not there dealing with the mud trying to get up and out of that campground. Here we were on flat level gravel ground, with an electrical plug-in and a source of water for 2 days. With dark gray skies and rain, we had no solar. Being plugged in was kind of nice, we didn't have to run the generator.  We could curl up and watch TV and pop popcorn and not worry about anything going on outside. Even if the guys left at 6:00 a.m., we were comfortable and we were safe.

I know we are anxious to move on further down the highway. We've made the decision to get down to the junction with route 37A. This would cut over and take us to the town of Stewart, British Columbia, which borders on the edge of a small part of Alaska which will lead us into the town of Hyder. We are looking forward to that next part of our journey

See that little part of Alaska 

that runs alongside of British Columbia

between there and the ocean?? 

That is where Hyder, Alaska is:

Here's the video link that goes along with today's blog:

273 miles travel today 

 6,511 mi traveled so far