Greetings one and all!
I have successfully traversed the Alaska Highway and more besides to complete the longest leg of my journey - Anchorage to Vancouver! Google maps tells me that's 2,194 miles, and I can tell you it sure felt like a long way! With Katie as my personal chauffeur for the journey, all I had to do was sit back and enjoy the views (and pay for half the gas) and enjoy them I did! To summarise: Alaska's interior has some really fantastic mountains, the Yukon has vast forests and impressively grey landscapes, and British Columbia has some wonderful lakes, rivers, and canyons. One thing they all seemed to have in common, however, is cold nights! Sleeping in a car seems so much easier when you are cruising along in the passenger seat, with the sun shining down on you keeping you warm during the day. But when the chill of night sets in, and the electrically heated seats (hell yes) shut down, it can get real cold!
My conclusion? Somebody needs to invent a nose-warming device for sleeping. Always, without fail, it was my nose that seemed to wake me in the night screaming "ARE YOU TRYING TO FREEZE ME TO DEATH?". Various efforts to cover my face to keep my nose warm (for example, using my buff or the hood of my sleeping back) resulted in a slow suffocation which was not conducive to peaceful sleep at all. As a result, my nights were a constant battle between oxygen supply and heat conservation.
One of the hardest things with such a long drive, is finding a way to fill your evenings without spending a lot of money. After 8-9 hours of driving each day, you certainly don't feel like going straight to bed in that very same vehicle. The things you crave are contact with the outside world, and a nice beverage of the alcoholic variety. As a result, we took part in a daily cruise of whichever settlement we were in, regardless of size, in order to discover the holy grail - a pub with cheap drinks and free wifi! Such a place is indeed a treasure of mythical proportions, and as such are exceedingly rare. To purchase a beer for $5 was the best we could hope for, and usually free wifi was obtained instead by parking outside a hotel for the night (also useful for free breakfasts in the morning!).
What could you, as a traveller following in my trail, experience along such a voyage?
Tok - This is a small town which clearly exists for just one purpose: it is the junction where people heading into alaska decide if they are aiming for Anchorage or Fairbanks. As such, there is nothing much to see, though we did experience several inches of snow so that was fun :)
Whitehorse - Probably the biggest city in the Yukon, there are many touristy shops where you can buy hand-crafted-just-about-anything. They also seem to believe it is important to have two of everything in a square mile, so there are two tim hortons, two starbucks, and so forth. If you truly wish to follow my footsteps, you will have to sleep on the sofa of total strangers (discovered on couchsurfing by Katie), in a house which has possibly never been cleaned, at all. This house is also the residence of a dog who feels it is his DUTY to bark extremely loudly at every person who approaches the front door, regardless if they only left the house for a minute. Few Z's were caught here.
Watson Lake - Small town with big drama! There is 1 bar here (it has wifi!), and it is huge with a grand total of 3 other people in it. However, as the night progresses, you may experience a strange phenomenon - a middle-aged woman might appear, ghostlike, and purchase shots for everyone present (eventually over 10 people by the end of the evening), repeatedly and without pause. Such shots will invariably be B52s, since that is all the bar staff know how to make, or tequila. Several hours will pass, with many a cry of "cheers!" before relations break-down and the very same kindly purchaser of spirits will turn into a mentalist, attack one person, bite another, and end up getting arrested without ever paying for the drinks. Good times all round! On another note, there is an astonishing number of signs in the "Signpost Forest" here. Something like 50,000 by my estimate! If you ever wondered where those stolen road signs end up, look no further!
Dawson Creek - Not, as you might suspect, the location for a famous 90s television series! It is in-fact the end (or start, depending on your outlook) of the Alaska Highway. Mile 0, as every hotel, bar and cafe will tell you.
Quesnel - City of bridges! We performed a total of 13 bridge crossings during our stay in this location, partially because we couldn't find the way to the pub we wanted to attend, but also because there are a number of footbridges which could be described variously as "quaint" and "entirely pointless". What else does this wondrous location have going for it? Free pool at the bar!
Well I think that is, if anything, too long a blog post so I will keep my future plans a secret and post again (possibly) when I reach Los Angeles!
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