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Published: August 27th 2007
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Cassiar Highway
Some bridges are a bit narrow ... OK, it’s map time again. We left Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory a couple of days ago, got back on the Alaska Highway for a short way, and are now heading down the Cassiar Highway to Stewart, British Columbia (BC), and Hyder AK and then to Prince Rupert where we’ll catch a 15 hour ferry ride ($950 for 2 people and a 26 foot vehicle!) to Vancouver Island. It will be an “inside passage” trip, so we’re hoping for sun. From there, we hope to go to the Olympic Peninsula, skirt Seattle and head for home through Montana and North Dakota. Most of the campers we see now are “locals” from BC, Yukon or Alaska, heading north to home. We did see one caravan two days ago heading north, but they’ll be playing with all the winter closure dates in Alaska as they tour. We heard of one caravan that had its drivers going from Tok to Fairbanks in one day, a distance of about 350 miles. That’s about the same as expecting someone to go from Washington DC to Miami FL in one day on the interstates.
Whitehorse was thriving and clean. It has about 23,000 people, and we actually
Arctic Architecture
Note the artistic arrangement of moose horns and satellite dishes. ate lunch at a sushi restaurant. Friends know that we’ve been in withdrawal, since it’s been months since we’ve had raw fish. Whitehorse has a hospital, which serves an enormous area, since it’s where they take you (3 hours by road) if the weather in Haines is too bad for an air evac to Juneau.
23 August: We arrived at the start of the Cassiar Highway and found that it’s open again after some washouts. We’re told there are some single lane sections, but we’re 100 miles in and still on pavement. No problems yet. Ahead of us is one of those huge motorhomes with a 30 foot box trailer for his car. We figure he’ll have trouble if anyone does. This highway is again beautiful, with mountains and bright green and blue lakes and creeks. Lots of evidence of glaciers from the sharply pointed mountain peaks and hanging valleys, but only a little snow. It’s early fall here, and the trees are starting to yellow. The fireweed is going to seed, but we’ve been good and haven’t gathered any seed. It would probably love Tennessee, but we don’t need another invasive plant there.
Trey - here’s a
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Found at Bell II Lodge, a heliskiing resort on the Cassiar Highway spelling word for your classes: Tsiigehtchic is a town in northern Canada. To pronounce it, just sneeze. Actually, I don’t know how to say it.
We’ve made reservations in Prince Rupert for one last day of saltwater fishing, where they’re catching silver (coho) salmon, plus lingcod, halibut and rockfish. We hope to see bears in Hyder, even though it’s a little late in the year. The salmon were also late coming up the rivers.
24 August: Wow! The people talking about problems on the Cassiar were right. Today, the road crews were scrambling to build a detour around a place where the highway has collapsed into a canyon just north of the Stikine River bridge. It’s still collapsing at a rate (we were told) of 8 mm per hour, and we were told to stay tucked up on the uphill side as we went through. The highway workers estimate that one bad rainstorm will take the whole road out, and it’s just starting to rain. It’s a LONG way around to our ferry ride. There’s a milder slide/washout farther south that they’re not working on yet. We drove carefully - there are NO shoulders and few turnouts on a lot of the route.
We stayed last night at the town of Dease Lake, where we first tried the Lions Club campground south of town. It’s pretty, but there’s one trashy trailer that’s obviously a permanent fixture and a four-wheeler road at the end. Just after we’d put our money into the slot, four “quads” came roaring through, heading for the road. Outa there! We went back north to the Water’s Edge campground, which is beautiful and costs only $15. It seems like a slightly nicer provincial park, having an attendant and good landscaping, including a hanging pot of flowers at each site. Unfortunately, the lack of utilities may keep many people from staying there. We value quiet over electricity. However, things change … it was rainy and cold again, so we kept going to get through all the gravel and construction areas. We then wimped out and stopped at the Bell II lodge, mile 295 from the junction with the Alaska Highway. The lodge is pretty much the only game in town on this section of road, and it was a treat to find that our $30 for a full hookup also gave us access to the lodge’s exercise room, sauna and hot tub. We used them well, then watched a marathon of “Prisonbreak” DVDs that Tom bought for just such an occasion. We also caught up on email and read from Christine that it’s still terribly hot and dry around Lynchburg, and that Rios (our old Aussie) had stopped eating and drinking. We’ve always called him “comfort dog” and he’s now enjoying the air conditioning at their house. Thanks AGAIN Pyrdoms!
25 August: we stayed at the nicest provincial park yet, Meziadin PP, just south of the road to Stewart and Hyder. We’ll head there tomorrow morning.
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