We find
ourselves at the end of day two parked in a quaint little campsite situated
right beside the Sikanni River, the perpetual sound of icy cold water is broken
only by the occasional passing vehicle on the Alaska Highway to our right. It’s been a wonderful day of travel, learning
and adventure. Thus far the Alaska
Highway has served us only a few low-lying mountains and two or three deep
valleys to pass through, no major challenges for our little 2.7L quite
yet. We were quick enough to spot the
sign for the Old Alaska highway (not realizing it was at mile 21 just outside
of Dawson Creek) and got some footage of our little red truck crossing the
historic Kiskatinaw Bridge, a 531ft curved timber bridge, the only one of its
kind still in use on the AK-HWY. Before
we departed from Mile 0 we stopped in at the Alaska Highway House to see what
this highway thing is all about and learn what it actually means to build a
1523 mile highway in 9 months, pretty incredible to say the least.
 |
| Alaska Highway House |
Currently I
(Alex, the other writer on this blog) sit here surrounded by hovering
mosquitos, hoping the repellent that I’m drenched in will not give out. Alison has pulled her Hoodini act again and
left me with tent setup and dinner duty (she’s gone off to ride up the 9% grade
hill on the other side of the river that we descended earlier).
Still no
wildlife to be seen. We were shied off of going for a hike at Pink Mountain by
the locals when they started asking us questions like, “do you have a dog?”,
“do you have bear spray?”, “do you have a gun?” Some advice from an oil worker
was spoken like this, “drive to the top then walk around above the tree line,
then you can see the bears. I wouldn’t
go into the bush without a rifle.” OK! FINE! We won’t go for a hike…jeeeeeze!
Tomorrow we
go for a long haul, hopefully pass Muncho Lake and Liard River Hot Springs and
arrive somewhere between Fort Nelson and Whitehorse.
Adventure
on!
