July 06, 2019
It was certainly an exciting start to the day. The start of the famous Alaskan Highway. I guess it’s one of those days that really gets the hairs up on the back of your neck as traveler, at least it felt like that to us. To be heading off in our van towards Alaska certainly felt like an adventure into the unknown. With the obligatory photos out of the way at the famous sign in front of the Alberta Pool elevators art gallery building we filled the tank up with petrol and headed off on the long route North.
The Alaskan or ALCAN (Alaska-Canada) Highway was constructed during the second world war to connect the 48 central US states with Alaska. Measuring 2,700 Km it was completed in 1942 and took only 9 months to construct. The US military enlisted thousands of locals in the area to help build it. These days it would probably take at least that long just to cut through red tape to get approval such a vast project.
I knew we were in for some long days of driving. What I didn’t expect was just how long and straight some of that driving would be. At times you can go 60-70 miles without a bend or kink in the road. With some good driving music sorted we cracked on. At times I would keep myself entertained by checking the odometer and then seeing just how far it was to the roads vanishing point ahead. When there isn’t much other traffic about it’s hard to get a good perspective of distance. Despite the road being straight it undulated gently with the slightly hilly landscape and at times I clocked around 10 miles between where we were and the vanishing point in the distance. That’s like driving on a straight road from Sunderland to Newcastle and being in able to see Newcastle in the distance the whole time, ridiculous.
There wasn’t a lot to see most of the time. A lot of the terrain in the area North of Dawson is fairly uneventful. It’s just a tarmac stripe cut through flat forest with a good sized flat grass border either side of the road. The border is good as you get a heads up of any wildlife that may be inclined to run out in front of you. Bears have now become a daily occurrence on our travels. We see several every day now and compared to when we first started spotting them we happily drive past and leave them to get on with their business. As I mentioned before the bears in the Banff and Jasper National park appear to be desensitized to humans and that’s not a good thing for the bears or the humans. They are best left alone to get on with their day.
Eventually we did pass through the occasional small town. The highway’s in Canada cut directly through the centre of these small towns or rather I should say the small towns have been built around the highways. You get the highway in the middle then a road either side running parallel with the usual suspects of a petrol station, Subway, McDonald’s, A&W, Burger King…..you get the picture. The rest of the town then sits in a grid behind these roads. They are all built to this same formula and at times each one appears the same as the last. Just like shopping malls, everything is becoming generic with the same huge companies dominating the skyline. We stopped off at the slightly bigger town of Fort St. John to pop to a laundry and get cleaned up before cracking on again for another few hours.
We drove for about six hours this first day before finally pulling off the highway to yet another one of B.C’s free recreation sites. This time it was a very popular one with locals from Fort St. John and other small towns in the area and being a Friday it was nearly full. There were a lot of well laid out camp spots by the lake and thankfully we were able to claim one of the last remaining spots. As we started to unpack a bit and sort ourselves we greeted by a cheery hello from our neighbours on the site opposite. They seemed friendly enough and we said we would pop over in a bit once we had settled ourselves in and had some food.
Our neighbours were Lori Anne and James and both were about as redneck hillbilly as you could possibly get. They were certainly pleasant and friendly enough though and we sat chatting with them round their camp fire for a good few hours. Sharing a few beers and smokes and stories between us. They were nice people if not a little odd. I didn’t mind the craic on until Lori started to bang on a bit too much about Jesus and religion, and boy did she keep on going. “I wouldn’t have met James if not for the lord………I wouldn’t have got over my illness if not for the lord”. No pet, you wouldn’t have got over your illness if not for the doctors and medication you were given. And James, well you wouldn’t have met him if not for going to the local monster truck and ATV show. It was comical in the end. As we headed back over to our site James kindly asked if we wanted some of his firewood, which was a nice gesture and greatly appreciated. I hadn’t noticed anything out of sorts when we were sat over sharing their camp fire but when he arrived with the wood for us I was surprised to see that it wasn’t your standard chopped up logs. The wood was incredibly straight and the outer sides painted brown. He had taken his chainsaw to the nearby fence and hacked the entire thing down! We have seen evidence of this before at other B.C rec sites. Picnic tables chopped in half, tables missing seats etc. Come on James, what are you doing man?! We could hardly turn it down but inside it was boiling my piss. There really is no need for this. The B.C. Parks generously provide free camp spots with fire rings and picnic tables and it’s the locals who are lazy and cant be bothered to hunt out some nearby downed trees to chop up so they get their chainsaws out the back of their stupidly over-sized trucks and destroy the surroundings for everybody else. It’s not good and ruins it for everyone. Oh well, I guess at least we had a decent fire that night.
When we were over earlier that night Lori took our names to add us on Facebook. At the time we gladly gave them our details, they seemed friendly and harmless enough. That was before any crazy religious banter and fence felling occurred. Sure enough a couple of days later we had a friend request from them both and when I checked Lori had already updated her profile picture to a photo of myself with them both. Needless to say I haven’t accepted the invite for fear of God related preaching and too many gap toothed profile pictures so I’ll just leave the photo here for you all to enjoy. It was an interesting night to say the least.
