Welcome to the Alaska Highway
01 July 2018
This is where all of the trees are.
Found a use for that passenger footpeg. Now its a Tide Ad.
As per usual, it was raining when I woke up. But in a twist, it stopped just in time for me to pack up. I don’t even mind packing up a wet tent anymore. I stopped in at Tim Hortons for a super cheap breakfast and coffee, then rode over to the start point of the Alaska Highway. I wasn’t the only one, there was a couple on brand new Indians headed east, half a dozen RV’s of various shapes, and a couple from Mississippi traveling in their crown victoria for their 54th anniversary. I got a few pictures of the signs and stickers, then I was off.
I should have brought stickers!
Reese? Just Reese? What the heck, Canada?
Immediately after leaving Dawson Creek, I encountered 70km of construction. Fortunately, it was really only about 1 km of actual work, followed by 69km of road they had “milled.” And I keep wondering why my rear tire is wearing so fast..
Eventually the road gets out of the plains and into what I can only describe as enormous rolling hills covered in more trees than all of the trees I’ve seen in my life put together. They go forever, in every direction.
The hills are a little different than I’m accustomed to as well. The hills aren’t inrcredibly steep, but they go on for miles. If you’re standing at the top of one hill and looking across the valley to the next one, even a big rig truck is only a tiny dot. The scale is just incredible; on a bike you feel like an ant crossing football field.
There’s places where its clear that there have been forest fires at different times, and so there are signs of different stages of recovery . Some of it looks really recent, with lots of burnt out trees and only shrubbery on the ground. Others are starting to have young trees grow up in between the burnt out ones. Its an interesting reminder of how these forests work - fire is essential.
I like not running out of gas, so when this gas station popped up along the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, I stopped in. It was my first encounter with what is known as a cardlock. You put in your credit card at one end, it puts a huge temporary charge on it, you get gas at the other end, and then it removes the temporary charge later. This one was especially interesing because the whole gas station is portable. I guess they just drop it off a truck, hook up a generator (the whole hotel and gas station here was running off a big diesel generator), and they’re in business. I wonder if they take it out in the winter time when traffic dies down, or if this is just easier to maintain this far out.
My stop for the day was Fort Nelson, BC. There isn’t a whole lot there, but it does seem like a decent sized community. It had a couple of hotels, a Tim Hortons/gas station, and the Triple G Campground. It was Canada Day, so the campground restaurant was hosting a turkey dinner. I wasn’t that hungry though, so I fired up the stove and made some noodles with chicken. I don’t remember where I got the sauce, but it was pretty good. It was like chicken noodle soup, except it had noodles and actual chicken (from a can!). The other thing is that my cell phone no longer had coverage here. Up until now, I had been roaming using my AT&T wireless plan. Not sure if the phone is having issues, or its something with the service.
This is how chicken noodle soup should be. 900% noodles
We did this to a spoon before when backpacking. Not sure what causes it.
It was a pretty uneventful evening, I tried the campground wifi (it was broken), played frisbee with some kids from Grande Prairie, and adjusted my chain for the first time, 3100 miles into the trip. Its nice to kick back and relax on occasion.
P.S. I just added a whole boatload more pictures to the high resolution pictures on flickr. Spoiler alert, they’re way way way ahead of this blog.