We are in Cottonwood RV Park in Destruction Bay, BC. And this is the view out my back window:
Life’s tough out here in the wilderness.
We left Tok, AK, yesterday and did a leisurely 100 miles to Beaver Creek, British Columbia on the Alaska Highway, formerly known as the Al-Can highway. These are the kind of travel days I love. No hurry to get somewhere, so plenty of time to stop at interesting spots.
The first unscheduled stop was at the site of the Seaton Roadhouse. The Al-Can highway was built in 1942 in 8 months, when Canada and the US governments realized that Alaska could become crucial in World War ll and there was no way to get supplies to Alaska. So the highway was built and along the way roadhouses popped up to supply the workers and travelers. The highway was just a gravel road and no one attempted any speed, so many stops were necessary. Airstrips were also built along the way, usually just flat landing stretches. They were also used for supplies and for ferrying fighter planes to Russia.
Since Steve’s mother’s maiden name was Seaton, we had to stop and check out the roadhouse site.
The roadhouse operated from the 1940’s to the 1960’s, when the Alaskan highway was rerouted to slightly east of the road house. The Seaton’s abandoned the roadhouse as business dropped off. The land has become part of a wildlife refuge and is maintained as a recreation site.
It was 62 degrees out, but there were still a few patches snow, insulated from below by the permafrost.
We then made another stop a short ways down the road at the Wildlife Refuge visitor center. Steve asked about the Seatons and the native park ranger told of actually meeting Mrs. Seaton when she was a young girl. Mrs. Seaton was known throughout the area as a good cook. The rangers have done some research on the Seatons and are emailing Steve a pdf. You never know where you might find some genealogy information.
The next stop was the Alaskan-Canadian border. The border is marked by a pillar and a 20 foot wide mowed swath through the forest.
So we entered the Yukon and headed for Beaver Creek, where we parked for the night.
No picture of our site in Beaver Creek; it was slightly better than a gravel parking lot with utilities. This is roughing it for those of us with RVs. Many of the RV parks in Alaska and Canada are fairly bare bones – they are more than adequate for a safe overnight, but are by no means resorts where you might spend a week. But Beaver Creek had water and electricity at our site and the wifi was not bad at all. Two dump stations were available and we used one when we left this morning.
We only had about 100 miles to go today, but knew that the road would be bad. Construction on the Alaska highway never really ends. Each winter parts of the road are torn up by frost heaves and need to be repaved. Bridges along the route are being replaced in a timely manner, so construction is constant. We had heard that part of the section we would be on today was down to one lane and we would wait for a pilot car to lead us through the construction.
Construction was as advertised, but didn’t seem quite as bad as we’d heard. But there were a lot of gravel/dirt sections and we kept our speed down. The tedium was broken up by several animal sightings. The first were these swans.
They might be trumpeter swans, who migrate back to this area each summer. And shortly after, a grizzly bear crossed the road!
Of course, by the time we managed to grab the camera, he was well into the brush.
But at least we both saw the grizzly and have some photographic evidence. Unlike the fox that appeared by the side of the road a short time later. I was trying to look up something in the Milepost book and by the time I unearthed the camera, he had trotted back into the woods.
We stopped at a rest area to have lunch and wait for the pilot car to come through to lead us through construction and were lucky enough to visit with some ducks. They followed me along the shore, probably expecting to get fed, but were mostly enjoying the day. Several were taking a nap stretched out in the sun on an old deck.
The road construction and traffic:
We did have some beautiful scenery.
Love the snow capped mountains!
And much of the way was lined with wildflowers, the most prevalent of which is the fireweed, so called because it is one of the first things to grow after a wild fire.
Gorgeous!
Deb
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