This is a dream drive. Anyone who loves the road and what it can bring — adventure, surprise, wonder, a healthy bit of uncertainty and an unhealthy series of breakfasts — has yearned to do the Alaska Highway.
The road, built by Canadian and U.S. soldiers in 1942, winds 1,422 miles through prairie and mountain and mud from a little town in British Columbia called Dawson Creek through the Yukon to a little town in Alaska called Delta Junction. Or maybe it really ends in Fairbanks. That war still rages.
Most of the highway is two lanes and paved. Some of it is gravel. Some of it is just awful. Much of what surrounds it is magnificent.
It’s 2,210 miles from Chicago to Dawson Creek and the start of the Alaska Highway. For reasons of logistics and time, our drive instead begins in Vancouver, just 744 miles south of what’s called Mile 0. Using Edmonton as a base would have been even quicker, but Vancouver has better food.
Our transportation is a rented GMC Jimmy. Our tapes are heavy on Sibelius, Sinatra and Gershwin. Our homework has been insufficient. I’m not sure what to expect.
We’ll learn together. Then we’ll drive around Alaska for a week, together. The third week, for the drive home, is my time. We’ll get to that, down the road.
Here we go.
Day 1
The Trans-Canada Highway begins (or ends, depending on which way you’re going) in Victoria, then hops magically over the water to Vancouver. In and out of the city, it’s the equivalent of an interstate as it creeps beyond the usual urban sprawl (and past such towns as Clearbrook, The Raspberry Capital of Canada) toward a junction at Hope, an hour or so out of town.
No one knows why Hope is called Hope, but it has been Hope for 150 years, long before “First Blood,” Stallone’s first Rambo epic, was filmed in and around here. That was in 1981. Seventeen years later, “Rambo tours” to the filming sites are still promoted, which tells you all you need to know about Hope.
Well, a couple of more things. It has a sense of humor. From the town’s guide: “Rumor has it that only men shorter than Stallone were chosen as extras.”
And it has a sense of history. The Japanese-style Friendship Garden, downtown, is a memorial to an internment camp 14 miles west where 2,300 Japanese-Canadians were held from 1942-45. So it wasn’t just us. The camp’s barracks have been preserved.
About 35 miles north of Hope is “Hell’s Gate,” where the Fraser River surges through a narrows traversed by a footbridge or — more fun and far less work — an Airtram, either of which delivers you to shops selling fudge and souvenir spoons.
Past Lytton (The Rafting Capital of Canada — lots of Capitals on this trip), the road leaves the Fraser and winds down gently until it runs alongside the Thompson River. Soon, timbered mountains are replaced by dry, sagebrush-covered mounds reminiscent of the area around the battlefield at Little Big Horn. The change is startling.
At Cache Creek, the Trans-Canada heads east toward Newfoundland (tempting), but we go north on British Columbia Highway 97.
The mountains are gone. Just about everything is gone. Not much out here except towns with names like 70-Mile House and 100-Mile House and 150-Mile House. Timber country gives way to cattle ranches and green meadows. Signs along the road talk of B&Bs and cross-country skiing, and roadside gas stations sell live bait, and fishing boats are on Lac La Hache, and there’s a sense that this might be a nice place to hang out for a few days.
But our destination is much farther north.
Day 2
If it had been the first weekend in July, I would’ve collided with the Williams Lake Stampede. But it isn’t, which meant getting a motel room was easy and finding anything worthwhile in Williams Lake wasn’t.
Folks, let’s be frank here: These are not great towns. For travelers, they are places to buy gas, get fed, get slept and get out of.
Next town up: Quesnel (pronounced “Kwe-nelle”). Along with being the Gold Pan Capital of the World, it has Pinnacles Provincial Park. Katherine, at the town’s visitors center, suggests the 15-minute walk through the woods from the parking lot to the actual Pinnacles.
She makes another suggestion. “I suggest a lot of bug spray,” she says. She’s right, twice. Nice Pinnacles. Four welts.
After another hour on the road: Prince George. The Spruce Capital of the World.
In fairness, the town is undergoing much street repair, so right now it’s not at its best. It’s easy to imagine how the town will look once the work is complete: It will be a crummy town with new streets. And a casino.
On the other hand, there’s the weather.
“We had a really nice winter,” says Lynn Sturgeon, grabbing a smoke outside the frame shop she watches on alternate days. “One week of 30-below, and that was it.”
Centigrade or Fahrenheit? Doesn’t matter.
Just south of MacKenzie and without warning, mileage markers turn kilometric. Metric also brings dreariness. The two-lane winds passively through endless stretches of timber. Mountains, such as they are, are too distant to matter much, and the thought occurs that November around here probably isn’t a whole lot of fun.
The appearance of McLeod Lake on the left side of the road generates some interest. Here and there, fishermen in boats test the water, suggesting there might be reason to linger if time allowed — but it doesn’t. The highway turns east, bypassing MacKenzie, and also turns a little rough (“frost heaves”). A sign announces Bijoux Falls. I leave the road, take a look — excellent falls — and move on.
The road signs tell you to slow down here, but I would have anyway: After miles of seeing little but trees and an occasional patch of pond, the Canadian Rockies — last seen around Hope — return with a vengeance. Pine Pass is marvelous. The only burr in the experience is a gas gauge gaining on E.
“Just made it, eh?” says John after filling my tank at his gas station-general store-R.V. camp, which pretty much is all there is in Chetwynd. He asks where I’m from, where I’m going. I tell him.
“Long way from home,” he says. You hear that a lot. “I bet 75 percent of the people come through here goin’ to Alaska.”
I ask if he has ever made the drive.
“No,” he says. “I been as far as Whitehorse.” He looks down the road. “I want to go to Fairbanks, Anchorage. Some day, I will.”
The Alaska Highway begins about an hour from Chetwynd. From Chetwynd, Fairbanks is 1,583 miles — about as far as the drive from Chicago to the Grand Canyon.
John, who has had this place in Chetwynd since 1963, will never see Fairbanks.
Day 3
Dawson Creek. The Alaska Highway starts here. A monument in the center of town pronounces itself Mile 0. The real Mile 0 is at another monument up the street, but this one is better for business. People pose at both.
This is a genuinely nice town. Clean, easy, functional and real. The countryside is rolling fields and clumps of trees and mounds in the distance — very green, like parts of Oklahoma in non-drought springtimes. Probably a good place to set down roots and raise a family.
The Alaska Highway is also British Columbia Highway 97 for its first thousand miles, and it gets off to a good start — uncrowded and in decent shape. Thirty miles out, truckers are warned about steep grades, and it becomes clear that what seemed like a flat road has in fact been a slow ascent, like the start of a roller-coaster ride.
The descent rushes to the Peace River and a bridge under repair, which creates our first little Alaska Highway slowdown. A few miles up, the first little Alaska Highway town: Ft. St. John.
At the town museum, which isn’t much as town museums go, I meet Bonnie, a local, and ask what there is in Ft. St. John.
“We have mud,” she says. “It’s awful.”
When it dries, she says, the wind turns the mud into dust. Awful.
“It’s not a clean city, by any means,” she says. “But it’s a busy one.”
Especially in winter, when the mud freezes and the trucks can navigate the firm backroads to haul out lumber and work the oil fields. Half the town, she says, works hard in winter and takes summers off — mud season, but also fishing season.
“A lot of people from this town haven’t left this town,” says Bonnie, who has lived here 40 of her 46 years. “We don’t seem to leave.”
I do. At the Mile 73 Cafe — 73 miles from Mile 0 — I’m served a turkey sandwich made with fresh turkey, partially thawed. I let it melt for a few moments, take two bites and leave the rest for the resident flies, which are there in abundance.
“It was fine,” I tell the waitress/cook/cashier, who could see the unfinished sandwich. “Anything worth seeing up the road?”
“Past Pink Mountain, you’ll start seein’ some wildlife,” she says. “Caribou cross the road up there.” A pause. “Caribou have the right of way.” She was not smiling.
Past Pink Mountain, there are signs of wildlife. Just signs. “Watch for moose.” “Watch for caribou.”
No moose. No caribou.
More signs. “Loose gravel” is a good one. Every few miles, it seems, pavement becomes loose gravel. Driving over these patches doesn’t slow you down, but they do get your attention.
Also getting my attention, at Mile 234: A mountain lion races across the road.
It has been sunny and warm much of this day, but now there are light showers, which cool the air and help clear my windshield of several pounds of accumulated bug glop.
And near Little Beaver Creek — a rainbow. Brightest, most vivid rainbow I’d ever seen. And then, alongside it, a companion rainbow.
And then, a few miles down the road, more loose gravel.
Day 4
Ft. Nelson, at Mile 300, is kind of a junior version of Ft. St. John — a little less busy and a little less dusty but, again, not much to look at. Enough motels and eating places to get by, a supermarket, banks, a rec hall for basketball and, in season, curling.
Dan Gray runs the town’s package-courier service.
“Not much here,” I say. Dan smiles, makes no apology. I was about to get an education.
“You’ve got to like the wilderness,” he says. “The town itself is largely a service center for the area.”
An area that’s mostly wilderness.
“There’s a lot of fly-in fishing, which is absolutely incredible stuff,” he says. “You’re going in where no one is. There’s boats out there, cabins, but it’s just doubly incredible if you’re a fisherperson.
“So you’re not going to find much in the town. It’s in the outlying area.”
And there’s the downside of a drive like this one: Up here, unless you make time to get way off the road, you’ve only tickled the total Great North experience. But the road always beckons . . . and Dan senses it.
“You must stop at the museum,” says Dan. “It’s one of the best in the North.”
I did. It was terrific, full of great junk — and, in the back, an authentically rustic fisherperson’s cabin that almost makes me change my itinerary. Almost.
Then a sign 15 miles out of town almost makes me do it again: The Northwest Territories, the sign says, are a right turn away. A right turn and 85 miles on a gravel road. It would be fun to check off another province/territory — who knows when I would have this chance again? But I stay on the Alaska Highway and almost immediately fall behind a half-mile line of cars, trucks, vans and RVs. Nothing is moving except yellow giants. It’s construction. Torn-up land. Rocks and boulders and mud.
Nostalgia sets in: Hey, this is just like 1942, without the threat of the Japanese.
That jam loosens, to be replaced, a mile or so ahead, by another one. The nostalgia rush wears off.
Then the road opens once more. And the landscape changes. Mountains again, and the Tetsa River rushing along the road, and the roadside full of yellow and blue wildflowers, and the highway is all mine — until the caribou, who grudgingly moves off to one side of the road, stares at me, waits to be photographed, then walks to a clearing and performs a necessary bodily function.
A few miles up, the river swells to Summit Lake. And just past the lake, on the shoulder, a miniflock of Stone sheep, local cousins (or nephews or in-laws) of the bighorn sheep so familiar in the stateside Rockies.
And beyond that, where the Alaska Highway cuts through Muncho Lake Provincial Park, miles and miles of the kind of mountain scenery that defies both adjectives and photography. Even in the rain — the drizzle has returned — this is spectacular.
And there, in the middle of the road, was the moose.
It was one moose of a moose. Big, big moose. I stop the car. The moose, seeing the car, first looks startled, then takes a couple of clops toward us. I fumble for my camera. The moose, less media savvy than the caribou, doesn’t pose but takes a sharp left and lopes into the forest before I can snap.
Soon, a sign announcing a turnoff for Smith River Falls. The falls, a series of them, are perfect: the setting, the sound, everything.
Another sign: I was in Yukon Territory.
And another sign: More construction.
Day 5
Watson Lake, Yukon Territory, is a little less than Ft. Nelson — but has something unique in the world.
It has the Sign Post Forest.
The thing started in 1942, when Carl Lindley of Danville, Ill., one of the soldiers building the Alaska Highway, got homesick and erected a signpost with the miles and direction to his hometown. It didn’t send a crush of tourists and moose to Danville, but it did launch this: Today, on a plot of land that would otherwise be another gas station, more than 30,000 hometown signs are nailed to posts for no apparent reason.
Jack Neel, a retired Texas pharmacist who should know better, stands atop a too-tall ladder hammering nails to support a small sign for his hometown, Quitman. Below it was a large sign for his hometown, Quitman, hung a couple of years earlier by the McClearins, who signed it.
While Neel struggles to get it just right, his wife, Pat, takes pictures.
“We’ve been looking forward to this for quite a while,” Neel says. He got the sign even, no minor task. “Maybe I could start a business — `Put your sign up for $5.’ “
Incidentally, if anyone in the northwest suburbs is wondering what happened to a big green sign for Park Ridge — well . . .
In a little gift shop near the Sign Post Forest, the discussion turns from signs to mosquitoes. The people of the Great North take inordinate pride in their mosquitoes and their thirstier relatives, little black flies.
“They’re nasty buggers,” says Henriette, who runs the shop. “They’re the worst.”
Her advice: Use a spray, don’t use perfume (“They zero in on that.”), and if you get bitten, don’t scratch. Some folks, she says, eat a little garlic, which may keep the things (and everyone else) away. From Rosemarie, who runs the register at another gift shop (that’s pretty much the town: signs, gift shops and flying syringes): “One guy swears on taking a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar every morning. It’s good for a lot of things. If you can stand the taste.”
Back on the road, which changed route numbers to Yukon Highway 1. About an hour out of town, more construction. This time, the constructors leave us with three miles of mud-ditch to cross. It’s slow, then it’s slow and rocky — and then it’s OK again, and beautiful driving. More mountains in the distance, blue with strips of remnant snow. Along the roads, bright green grass loaded with wildflowers.
At the Swift River Lodge and Cafe, a modest but friendly outpost, a cook named Denise talks about winters in the Yukon.
“It’s no colder than being, say, in Ontario,” she says. “It’s just a little longer. You’re pretty much locked in, but I really enjoy it. You get time to do your crafts. It’s time for yourself.”
Now, it was time to get moving. Teslin was next, for gas.
“How much driving time to Whitehorse?” I ask the attendant.
“How fast do you drive?” Around the limit, I say. “About an hour-45,” he says.
How long does it take you? I ask. “An hour-15,” he says.
It takes me two hours. It’s late afternoon, I have the Alaska Highway virtually to myself, I’m in no hurry.
Mountains. Lakes. Wildflowers.
Beautiful.
Day 6
Whitehorse wasn’t anything until the gold rush a century ago; it still wasn’t much until the Alaska Highway was routed through here instead of north through the territorial capital, Dawson City.
Now it’s the capital of the Yukon (Dawson lost it in 1953) and a base for tourists headed to or from Alaska on the highway or coming up from Skagway’s port, only 100 miles south. And it still isn’t much. Maybe 18,000 people live here, very few of them hauling donkeys and pickaxes behind them. It’s clean, it’s pleasant, and the fake-frontier facades are few. If you want a picturesque Gold Rush Frontier Town, this isn’t it.
“Whitehorse,” says a local rustic, “is a toilet for the Alaska Highway. People come and stay at a Best Western — in the Yukon, which is (extremely) stupid.”
Or (extremely) handy. Hey, the toilet works. There are good hotels (even if my intended lodging — that Best Western –did sell my room before I got there), a remarkable variety of excellent restaurants and outfitters willing to outfit any whim, whether it’s a day-trip up the Yukon River or something more extreme.
“The season’s short, but it’s awesome,” says Joe Cormier, who sets up raft trips for both the meek and the courageous. “The scenery is just killer.”
That it is. About two hours west comes the town of Haines Junction, primary base for exploring Kluane National Park. The views from the road are spectacular — and that despite the fact that all you can see, for the most part, is what amounts to a snowcapped barrier reef. Behind it, accessible only to hikers and by light-plane flyover, are views of Canada’s highest mountains (including the very highest, Mt. Logan, 19,551 feet), plus glaciers and other good stuff. It is wilderness at its most challenging, and even from a distance the taste is thrilling.
“I’ve had a lot of people come here from Alaska and say, `This is what we were looking for,’ ” says Val Drummond, who with her son sets up visitors with guides, cabins and whatever else they might need to take advantage of the park. “It’s a wonderful area.”
From the sublime to the silly: Burwash Landing, about 80 miles past Haines Junction, is home to the World’s Largest Gold Pan. It’s right there next to the Kluane Museum of Natural History. Take the obligatory picture of the pan, then treat yourself to this museum — a series of stuffed animals of the region set in dioramas worthy of any great museum of its kind, with piped-in sounds that are dead-on, right down to the buzzing mosquitoes. Really good.
It is the final treat of the Yukon. The Yukon is a wonderful area, too wonderful to race through so quickly. Fortunately, for future reference, I take good notes. Which, when the road a few miles ahead turns into something resembling a concrete Ruffle, is not easy.
Day 7
It’s a weird feeling seeing the U.S. border. On the one hand, there’s a sense of homecoming. The stronger sense is, “I’m not ready for this to end yet.”
The drive from the U.S.-Canadian border to Delta Junction, Alaska — the end of the Alaska Highway — is 200 dull miles on Alaska Highway 2. From Dawson Creek to Delta Junction, the original highway stretched 1,520 miles. It’s a few miles shorter now. The highway has been smoothed, straightened, improved in parts. In others, it’s a road best traveled by tanks.
For its entire length, it is a marvelous experience.
At Delta Junction is a monument saluting itself as the end of the Alaska Highway: Mile 1,422.
At Fairbanks is a monument, a similar monument, saluting itself as the end of the Alaska Highway: Mile 1,526.
“We’ve been going back and forth with Delta Junction about this for 50 years,” says Al Knapp of the Fairbanks’ Convention and Visitors Center. “We’re really The End of the Alaska Highway.”
As proof, on a wall of the center is a copy of a U.S. House resolution, dated 1943, establishing the official name “Alaska Highway” to the road from Dawson Creek all the way to Fairbanks.
But on today’s official map published by the State of Alaska, the road called the Alaska Highway ends in Delta Junction; the road into Fairbanks is the north end of the Richardson Highway. I point that out to Mr. Knapp. Who dismisses it.
“That’s the same argument Delta Junction uses against us,” he sniffs.
We’ll go with Delta Junction as the end of the Alaska Highway, but with this bow to Mr. Knapp:
For us, Fairbanks is the end of the road.
– DAY 1
Vancouver-Williams Lake, British Columbia: 368 miles.
Overnight: Sandman Inn, Williams Lake; $43 (all prices converted to U.S. rate).
Best grub: Canadian schnitzel (veal cutlet with crabmeat, shrimp and cheddar cheese), $11.16; Savala’s, Williams Lake.
– DAY 2
Williams Lake-Dawson Creek: 412 miles.
Overnight: Trail Inn, Dawson Creek; $46.
Best grub: Peace Country chicken (baked chicken breast stuffed with ham, mushrooms and cashews), $10.46; Alaska Cafe, Dawson Creek.
– DAY 3
Dawson Creek-Ft. Nelson: 282 miles.
Overnight: Woodland Inn, Ft. Nelson; $55.
Best grub: Buffalo steak with mushrooms, $11.16; Dan’s Neighbourhood Pub, Ft. Nelson.
– DAY 4
Ft. Nelson, British Columbia-Watson Lake, Yukon: 327 miles.
Overnight: Big Horn Hotel, Watson Lake; $59.50.
Best grub: Meat loaf, pan-fried potatoes and red cabbage, $9.45; Northern Rockies Lodge, Muncho Lake, British Columbia.
– DAY 5
Watson Lake-Whitehorse: 275 miles.
Overnight: High Country Inn, Whitehorse; $83.
Best grub: Fresh Yukon Arctic char, grilled, with herb butter, $15.22; Pandas, Whitehorse.
– DAY 6
Whitehorse-Beaver Creek: 281 miles.
Overnight: Westmark Inn, Beaver Creek; $62.
Best grub: Buffalo burger, $6.30; Mackintosh Lodge, Haines Junction.
– DAY 7
Beaver Creek-Fairbanks, Alaska: 316 miles.
Overnight: Captain Bartlett Inn, Fairbanks; $119.
Best grub: Halibut grilled in egg with shrimp and green onions, $22.95; Pike’s Landing, Fairbanks.
Total miles: 2,261
Lodgings are listed primarily to provide pricing information and should not be considered recommendations (and, in fact, the non-suite rooms at the Williams Lake Sandman Inn really need a paint job). Miles are actual but include meanderings.
NOTES FROM THE ROAD
Highlights: Vancouver, Fraser Canyon, Ft. Nelson town museum, Muncho Lake Provincial Park, Watson Lake’s Signpost Forest, Whitehorse, Kluane National Park, Kluane Museum of Natural History in Burwash Landing, Delta Junction, Fairbanks.
Road food: Schnitzels, steaks, chicken, burgers, buffalo, pasta, prawns, halibut, salmon, Arctic char, reindeer sausage, crab legs.
Wildlife seen: Moose, caribou, mountain lions, stone sheep, ravens, red foxes, rabbits and various other birds and varmints.
Essential stop: Kluane National Park, Yukon Territory.
Easy sidetrip: Dawson City, Yukon.
Cheapest gas: The equivalent of $1.10 gallon (adjusted to U.S. currency and measure), Vancouver (but as much as $1.68 in the Yukon).
Best meal: Buffalo steak with mushrooms; Dan’s Neighbourhood Pub, Ft. Nelson, British Columbia.
Best hotel: Trail Inn, Dawson Creek.
Best question: Why would a state with summer days featuring 22 hours of sunshine go on Daylight Saving Time?
Best souvenir: A Santa Claus ornament fashioned from dried moose dropping (about the size of a jellybean), $2.50; the Totem Pole, Teslin, Yukon Territory.
Road best traveled: Two chunks of the Alaska Highway: from Summit Lake through Muncho Lake Provincial Park, British Columbia; and from Haines Junction to Kluane Wilderness Village, Yukon Territory.
IF YOU GO
During this trip on the Alaska Highway, I saw no one changing a tire along the road and no one in need of roadside assistance. Nonetheless, conditions are such that anyone pondering this drive should consider the following:
– Check your tires, and be sure the spare is adequate.
– Check your car’s hoses and belts, and consider taking along replacements.
– Gravel roads, for the most part, are as driveable as paved roads, but maintain an interval to protect your windshield from flying pebbles.
– Don’t let your fuel tank drop much below half-full; gas stations can be far apart.
– Reserve lodging as soon as you know where you want to spend the night. In summer, rooms can be tight.
– Be prepared for variable weather. Temperatures were in the 80s around Prince George in British Columbia and in the 60s in Fairbanks.
– Bring music. Radio stations aren’t everywhere.
– Build in time to hike, fish or just rest for a day or more. This should be an experience to savor, not a race.
———-
ON THE ROAD. The second week of our drive north, concluding this weekend with a drive around Alaska, will appear next Sunday.
After a brief break, Alan Solomon will be back on the road July 12, taking California’s legendary Highway 1 from Los Angeles to San Francisco. That report will appear July 19.
But there are still adventures to plan — and your suggestions can help. Be part of our Great American Drives by going to our special board on the Internet Tribune: chicago.tribune.com/go/drive.
Alan Solomon’s e-mail address is alsolly@aol.com
