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Published: June 10th 2009
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Pickhandle Lake
At a Rest Stop. I liked the reflection. When I was getting ready to depart Kluane Lake, I thought I would plug Fairbanks, AK into the "where to" on the GPS. It just said, "Turn in 443 miles." I guess I won't get lost. There's only one road to get there.
I got an early start. After Whitehorse the road gets quite a bit rougher and the wilderness is deeper. There are more and more frost heaves in the road. The engineers call them thaw bulbs. They cause a roller coaster type ride and you better slow down or they'll launch you. They are usually about 50 feet across and you rise, then drop, then rise again. They occur because all of the land here is permafrost down a few feet which never thaws. The road itself causes an unnatural thaw in the permafrost causing the expansion and contraction. Most of them are marked by small orange flags along the road. It's a never ending task for the road crews to fix them.
There aren't many towns up here. I drove for over 2 hours and only saw 2 vehicles. Almost half of the vehicles on the highway are RV's, from the behemoth bus-like motor homes towing
Quite a Rig
I thought this was a pretty cool way for a biker to camp. cars to the small pickup truck campers. And most of the people are retired old farts like me. I guess we're the only ones with the time to drive this road.
I stopped at a rest area on Pickhandle Lake and there was a sign about the native people of the far north. They moved constantly to hunt and
WALKED through this rugged wilderness, covering hundreds of miles to survive. The only animals they had were dogs, which they used to help carry their packs. They had no horses until the white men came in 1890. And don't forget the winters. Just this past winter, the woman at the campsite said the lake was not thawed yet because they had a pretty cold winter this year. One stretch of three weeks never saw a temperature above -40 Fahrenheit!
I made the Alaska border at 8:45 AM Alaska Time/5:45 Central. It was pretty cool. I'd already been on the Alaska Highway for 1,188 miles. It was mile 4,172 for me on this trip.
The official end of the highway is Delta Junction, AK-1,390 miles from Dawson Creek, BC. The unofficial end is Fairbanks, 1488 miles. So I
continued on to Fairbanks and that's where I ended my day. I completed the entire length of the Alaska Highway today. It really isn't as tough a drive as it used to be. It's a paved highway. I only traveled about a total of 100 miles of gravel and that was because of road construction. Building the highway was an amazing feat. The US Army Corps of Engineers were charged with building it because the US wanted a land connection from the lower 48 states to Alaska. After Pearl Harbor, The US saw it as a necessity. They built the entire road in 8 months from March 9th 1942 until October 25, 1942!
I'm trying to put together an itinerary for Alaska and I admit I haven't done a lot of planning about it. I know number 1 is to see Mt. McKinley and Denali National Park. After that, I'll just figure it out as I go.
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Mr. Puggle
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Congrats!
What is the saying, "Go west young man." You did it! How exciting. The picture of Pickandle lake is AMAZING! Love the pic of you in front of the welcome to alaska sign. :) Drive safe.