Alaskan Highway – Dawson Creek, British Columbia

June 5 Tuesday Left beautiful Jasper and drove to Dawson Creek, British Columbia in the rain. This was about a seven hour drive and we just pulled into a Walmart to spend the night and stock up on a few things. We have crossed another time zone so we are now in Pacific Time (3 hours earlier than EST). The next morning it was raining harder as we headed to the Visitor's Center to stand under the 0 mile marker for the Alaskan Highway for a quick picture and then we hit the road.

 Alaskan Highway – Fort Nelson, British Columbia

June 6 Wednesday Fort Nelson was our next destination. As we went through the first mile of the highway, we received our first stone chip on the driver's side of the windshield. This is a very famous rite of passage on the highway...some people have even suggested to go ahead and chip the windshield yourself before you start to get it over with! Most exciting event of today was sighting some mountain goats on the road. After driving 6 hours in the rain (again) we pulled into our campground in Ft. Nelson. Big night --- I did the laundry! It rained hard all night long.

Alaskan Highway – Watson Lake, Yukon

Notice hats in all three rooms

June 7 Thursday Still raining!  Left for Watson Lake-- about an 8 hour drive. Took about an hour –going 10 miles an hour – to go 12 miles up and down a mountain pass with about 12 other RVs in thick fog and mist. At the bottom we stopped at Testa River Services for their world famous hot cinnamon buns as advertize in the Milepost. They didn't disappoint! Our next stop was Toad River Lodge which is famous for over 6800 baseball caps hanging from their ceiling. These are just little stops along the road to break up the trip and provide minimal services...food, gas etc.

Washed out road

Beautiful Muncho Lake

Going through Summit Pass (elev. 4400ft) we encountered Muncho Lake. This is a beautiful aqua blue lake...if I didn't know better, I would think I was in a tropical location because of the color. The road was cut into the mountains along the lake, running a few feet above the lake. With all of the rain, about three feet of a section of the road was washed away. We were directed by a road crew to drive slowly through the middle of the water which was flowing over the road about 2 feet deep. Lots of warnings about falling rocks and we hit a rock that had fallen – Gary had to choose between driving onto the steep shoulder or straddling the rock, which he did with the RV, 

but it hit the RV mudflap and rolled under the

 jeep and shattered. Everything seems to be okay. 

We kept looking for wildlife along the way...they were few and far between, but all in all we saw 5 brown bears, 1 grizzly bear, several deer, and several bison! Neither of us had ever seen a bison before--- those animals are big!! 

We finally reached our campground for the night....really just a big parking lot with utilities. Watson Lake is the home of the Sign Post Forest...this is a park that is just row after row of license plates & signs that people have hung there since it was started in 1942 by one of the engineers  working on the construction of the Alaskan Highway. The collection now numbers more than 72,000. Of course, we hung one up also. It was a MX license plate that we had painted for Jon at Loretta Lynn's racetrack many years ago. 

We also took in a show at the Northern Lights Center which was like a planetarium, but showed actual filmed footage of the Aurora Borealis. Beautiful! When we got back to RV park, we had a knock on our door from the owner with the news that the road north of us is now closed because of a mudslide. We are planning to leave tomorrow for the next leg of our trip, but will have to check the road conditions before heading out. Oh, and by the way, we just discovered another 6 inch crack in our windshield. What an adventure!! Thanks goodness we have full glass coverage...