Portrait of a Roadtrip: Alaska Part 6 Dawson

        We awoke in Whitehorse, nice and early. The sun rises at 4.45am at this time of year, so we’d only had about 4 hours of darkness. Still, our cabin in the garden had provided us with a good nights rest, the blinds closing out most of the light in the early hours. 

At round 7.30am we got up, hit the showers in the main house of the Beez Kneez hostel and tried desperately not to wake anyone or draw any attention from any of the guests or the odd manager. Fortunately the only one who appeared to notice our movements was the lovely blue eyed husky. 

We made a pit stop for gas and bought a camping mosquito proof gazebo from the huge outdoors shop before blazing out of town and onto the now familiar, dirty unpaved roads of the Yukon. 

The day was long. One of those days that your memory just doesn't bother to hold on to. We drove about 8 hours straight. The scenery was of endless pine forest in all directions stretching for thousands of miles. If we’d been dropped there on day one it would’ve been a spectacle, but after a couple of weeks of this, it appeared monotone and bland. Steph slept a lot of the journey, despite the bumpy nature of the rocky dirt road. I couldn’t look away from the road too much anyway, needing to constantly keep the car out of ditches and huge pot holes in the gravel.

At around 4pm we suddenly pulled in to one of the coolest locations on earth. Dawson.

        Dawson was one of the few places i’d pre-booked us accommodation, and the only place on the trip where we’d stay in a hotel. The Westmark in Dawson is a beautiful hotel, spanning a couple of streets, and in fitting with the rest of the town, had wooden walls of washed blues, greens and reds. 

The town of Dawson was like a beautiful treat, a marvelous reward at the end of a long vast journey. The streets, which are nothing more than dirt and sand, where straddled by wooden boardwalks. The buildings, originals everywhere you looked, reminded me of every western i’d ever watched, except less gritty and more beautiful. It had a feeling of potential, like everyone in town was either seeking adventure or living one. 

After getting a feel for the hotel room, we went strolling around town and found a quaint pub with a lovely outdoor beer garden. The food was epic, and Steph had a fairly standard size plate of calamari, which produced anything but standard effects an hour later. We drank beer and wine in the sun, soaked up the ambiance and relaxed. 

        When we got up to leave, Steph complimented the waitress on how ridiculously pretty she was (as is Steph’s way), and we walked to the riverfront. Steph has a habit of getting overly full from food without actually consuming an incredible amount. She found herself learning over at right angles, hands on thighs, trying to right herself. 

“I need to lay down, i’m gonna vom.” 

“You serious??”

“No I mean it, its bad. I need to lay down now.”

We sat on the grass, Steph on her back whilst I rubbed her stomach, trying to alleviate the symptoms. Eventually she began to feel better and we were in fits of giggles joking around like teenagers. I walked to the river and watched as an old fashioned steam boat fought against the mighty current of the Yukon river. 

We walked back to the hotel at 10 ish and had a cocktail, then Steph went to take a bath and I decided on a final stroll, this time with the camera, wanting a record of these cool old frontier streets.
        Dawson now has a small population, even smaller in the winter, when the snow comes in and the world turns to almost perpetual darkness. This was the Yukons capital, until it was moved to Whitehorse in the 1950's, due to being missed off the official Alaskan Highway by 300 miles. When the gold rush hit in 1896 the town grew and became it's centre, two years later its population hit 40,000, then by 1899 it had declined to 8,000. During the 70's the population was down to just 66 or 700 hundred, but thanks to a connecting road through the mountains to Alaska (which we'd hit the next day) and some tourism, its sitting pretty now.

        This is where it all went sour.

I ambled down the stairs at the front of the hotel, and halfway down misplaced my flip flop. My right ankle turned inward at a rather odd angle, as I began a pain filled fall toward the stairs. I heard one, two, three and then a loud fourth and final crack as the ankle continued it's bend towards my leg, an area of the body it has no right to shake hands with and get to know in any way. 

I went down the flight of steps into the dirt, and made sounds that didn’t make a lot of sense in English, but snakes might have recognized. The pain was immense. 

I eventually got back up and attempted to put my foot on the ground. I struggled, but could do it. The sensible part of my brain was shouting at me to hobble up and get ice. The ‘man voice’ inside my head told me to walk it off. The sun would be going behind the hills soon (being about 11pm!) and I wanted the light. So, in my stupidity, I hobbled the length of the town and back, taking photos and of course, missed the light. 

        As I got back to the room, Steph had already climbed into bed. 

“I had a bit of an accident,” I said. 

“What?!”

“Think i’ve broken my ankle.”

“Oh my god! Get onto the bed!, i'll get ice.”

        She jumped into action, thrusting a pillow beneath my legs, supporting it, and fetching ice to put on the joint. When I explained that I hadn’t returned immediately after the fall, she continued to treat me like a pro, but let me know I’d been a total dumb ass, which was of course completely accurate. 

The next morning we had a good drive, including loading onto a ferry to cross the Yukon river, and the a few hours through the mountains, where we would finally hit our target and cross the Alaskan Border. My ankle got bigger and bigger through the night, and by morning I was practically unable to move it at all. It was an issue for two reasons. The first being that it was my driving foot. The second, and more troublesome issue being that in about 2 weeks we’d be hiking for days on end in the wilderness of the Denali backcountry, with bears and wolves at our heels. Not ideal.

         Putting these worries to the back of our heads, we rose in the early Dawson light, and headed for our Yukon river ferry crossing, we would reach Alaska today. That was the main thing.

Come back next week for part 7, into Alaska. Check out more photos at www.howlandphotography.com and support us on Facebook. Hit the store at the top of this page for prints!

Portrait of a Road Trip: Alaska Part 5 - Whitehorse

        We got up early and packed up the tent. Our camp for the evening had been ideal, a $10 self registration site, empty but for one old couple in their camper. There had been enough fallen branches around to keep a fire going for hours, and the solitary drop toilet shed had done it's smelly job. 

All packed up, we got back on the road, knowing we had a short drive (comparably, it was still a nice 100 miles) to whitehorse, which promised a bed, a roof, a shower and luxuries like restaurants. We hadn’t particularly missed these things, in fact I recall thinking at the time of arrival how I hadn’t once wished for anything even when in the most remote areas of the Yukon. However, now that we were presented with the amenities, we felt like even the most basic service was something special. 

        We arrived in Whitehorse and pulled up to the privately run Beez Kneez hostel i’d booked months earlier. We were greeted by Nancy and her Husky, Bertha. The hostel was not at all what i’d expected it to be. A lady called Dona Sun, a farm gal from Saskatchewan that moved to Whitehorse in 1991 had essentially converted her house into a hostel. It was intimate and friendly, though I couldn’t help feeling like we were in someone else’s house. 

I’d booked a ‘cabin’ for a night, which turned out to be a little shed in the rear garden. It was cute and private, plus there were clean bathrooms and a working shower in the house, so Steph and I felt more than happy. As was the case on a number of occasions on our trip, we had gone a good while without a shower and we were genuinely bouncing with excitement and the idea. We dropped our packs in the shed and got clean. It felt like a layer of dirt literally peeled off in there, we emerged new people. 

        Whitehorse is a pretty big town, considering where it is. A completely isolated location in the middle of the yukon wilderness, the closest city to it is Edmonton, 1,994km away. It has a population of just under 30,000 people, which makes up 75% of the total Yukon population.  

It was early, so we spent the day taking in the sights of the town. We had an epic meal at Klondike Rib & Salmon Barbecue, which is a great comfort food eatery in one of the town's historic buildings, full of artifacts and great old photos from the goldrush. I ate too much. It really wasn’t my fault, they had bread pudding on their desert menu, and it wasn’t small. Afterwards we went to a big camping outlet on one of the main streets and bought a few new pieces of kit, then headed to the cabin/shed for the night.

We’d been in the cabin discussing the trip so far, the plan for the net few days etc. Time flew along and without realizing it we’d somehow ended up staying up till 11.50pm. The reason it surprised us was because, amazingly, it was still light outside!

       In summer, Whitehorse gets sunsets at around 11.30pm, and it stays pretty light afterwards too. I went out into the garden and couldn’t believe it. It was such a strange and alien sensation to be able to see around, in light you would expect at maybe 7pm, at midnight. I suddenly got excited, realizing that this was not our most northerly point of our trip, not even close. 

Next up, would be Dawson. 500km almost directly north. The last true frontier town. Tune in next time.

        

Portrait of a Road Trip: Alaska Part 4 - Into the Yukon

        

        The morning we woke in Liard marked a fresh stage in our trip. True frontier land. We we already five hundred miles from Dawson Creek, the next town south. The next town to hit would be Whitehorse, another four hundred miles into the Yukon territory. Knowing full well that the day was going to be long and road oriented, we took the liberty of a morning dip in the springs. The refreshing water woke us up and gave us a buzz that lasted for hours. So perfect were the springs that it took me a while to pull myself away. 

That day the plan was to head for Watson lake. The guide books had informed us of a town (a street with a shop and a cafe) on the lake, which meant a potential camp location for the night. It didn't quite work out that way. 

        The drive to Watson was relatively painless. A mix of tarmac road and gravel stretches which went on for twenty to thirty miles at a time. I constantly worried about the state of our poor chevy, thinking at any time we could hit a pot hole that would do some real damage and leave us stranded in (literally) the middle of nowhere. No matter how many hours we drove that niggling worry wouldn’t disappear. It was around this time that we passed a rare vehicle coming the other way, and a stray kamikaze gravel piece made a bid for our windshield. The impact made us both jump, and left a neat crack, perhaps three inches wide, in an annoying position in Steph’s eye line. 

        Despite the screen annoyance, we hit Watson as expected and headed straight for a campsite, three miles out of town, annoyingly. In a town the size of a street, with endless wilderness in all directions, the nearest they could situate a tent site was three miles away. 

        Back in town we ventured into the ‘local department store’, more out of fascination than need. Inside the store, which amounted to three moderately sized rooms filled with postcards, fishing gear and clothes, which resembled what imagine our parents had encountered when shopping, in the 1980’s. 

       After we perused in amazement, we heard a couple shopping, mother and daughter. At one point I heard the lady at the till point out how cool her new purchases were. “Ah…. fashion” uttered the mother. I employed just about every ounce of self control at my disposal to keep my laughter inside. Towns like this we’re few and far between on the Alaska Highway, the handful that exist do so in a strange state of time-freeze. The priorities of the folks in these frontier towns are most certainly a far stretch from your average. 

      What puts Watson Lake on the map is the forest. Not a forest    of trees, one made purely out of signs. Started in 1942 by a guy who got a little homesick, the first sign popped up, signaling the distance to the constructor's home town in Illinois, other people added their home towns, and it just carried on for the next 74 years. The total number of signs now in the forest stands at 100,000, and growing. 

We headed to the only food establishment on the street, ‘Kathy’s Kitchen’, which was surprisingly phenomenal. Then, mulling over the situation in town (that being the lack of anything worth seeing and a distinct lack of scenery) we made the decision to push on up the road. If we could make a few more hours, we’d have an easy trip the following day to Whitehorse. 

      Throwing the tent back into the car, we flew along the road, which snaked in and out of the Yukon territory for a couple of hundred miles. After a few hours, as the sun began to make its way down, we pulled off the road into a self registration site. Empty. 

We got a fire going, and enjoyed an evening of smores, hot dogs and music by the flames. Teslin Lake ran along the site looking beautiful. It would do nicely. Next morning, we’d hit the first real piece of civilization in a thousand miles. Whitehorse. 

 

      See more photos and buy merchandise on the links at the top of this page For part 5 check in next week!

Portrait of a Road Trip: Alaska Part 3 - Northern Canada

       Jasper was a pretty nice drive. Up through the rockies with endless forests, mountains and lakes. We had a night to kill halfway, and pulled into a little camping area which had some great thick trees, perfect for the Stingray…

     

         We slept well with the stars out in full sparkle through the canopy. The stingray was proving to be well worth the money. It let us sleep well off the ground, safe from prying animals, and was ludicrously comfy. After a chilled out night, I woke before Steph and climbed down the ladder to the camp area below, took out the grill and kitchen gear from the car and cooked up some french toast. The coffee press (one of two coffee making devices I got at REI) got another work out too. Essentially a french press within a thermos, it worked well, to retain heat once the coffee was brewed, but I preferred the simpler and smaller device we’ll meet in the backcountry later in the trip. 

After waking Steph and having a small feast, we hit the road and headed for Jasper. The drive took us to the northern most point of the rockies, and then into a huge campsite. On arrival we were once again warned that 2 bears where currently in the site, and as such, we should be sure to follow the normal ‘bear aware’ precautions. No shit. 

We threw up the tent and made our way immediately into town and found to my delight, the ‘Jasper Brewing - Brew Pub & Eatery’ was on the small and quaint main street. We had a couple of delicious beers whilst eating a monster burger (I should point out Steph had a salad) and peering at the mountains in front of us. 

I got the impression Jasper would be a nice place to spend some time, a lot like Glacier and Gladstone had been, but this was a short stop on a mammoth 3,500 mile drive to Alaska, we couldn’t hang around.

The next day we hit the road and made it to one of the most anticlimactic locations on the trip. Though it gave us a buzz due to its status as being ‘Mile 0’ on the Alaska Highway, Dawson Creek is a dog awful place. It’s highlights include a KFC, and a Frozen Yoghurt store. Just awful. 

We stayed in a motel that night, and made use of it to wash clothes and restock the gear in the car, which had gotten a little disorganized from road life. 

We had a good nights sleep, watched a little television, which we’d not seen in weeks, and then hit the road early the next day. 

This day marked the real transition from normalcy to crazy, from civilization to barren and from people to no people. After we left Dawson City the road began to vanish. It turns out that not all that many people venture further north than this, and the wise men in Canada’s transport department seem to have figured roads aren't all that important up here. They went from smooth black, to rough, to sand, to this.

         We dealt with this for about 9 hours, maybe ten. Along the way we encountered one roadside cafe who’s owner, an elderly lady who sold sandwiches, coffee and machetes, told us of the crazy folk who travel the roads up here. Apparently a couple of years prior a man on a bus had randomly whipped out a machete and beheaded half of his fellow passengers. I sipped my coffee smiling, then got bacon the car and made sure to pop the door lock down.

We’d grabbed a paper in Dawson Creek which had on its front a huge story about a monster fire on the Alaskan Highway. Later in the day we came across it for ourselves and we were awestruck at the power of nature and its capacity for destruction.   

         

        Towards the end of the day we were getting pretty tired. We found a tiny gas station and I got chatting to a couple who were biking the highway from Alaska back south. I enquired if there was a campsite near Muncho Lake, which we were less than 30 minutes from.

‘Sure, its cheap and nice enough, but go a little further and you hit Liard Hot Springs. They’re beautiful and theres a campsite there. If you stay on their site you get free entry to the springs.’

We we sold, so we made a dash for Liard. It took about an hour, but as the sun was about to fall away, we found the site. A black bear dashed into the bushes as we turned into the grounds, the first bear we’d seen so far, oddly. 

Liard Springs are absolutely beautiful. Such a natural, relaxing and peaceful site. Being so far from any town meant it had hardly any visitors, but considering this, it was remarkably well maintained. There’s no way around it, it takes a good four hundred mile drive to get to this place from the nearest town. This is desolate country. Beautiful, wild and desolate country. 

After a day in the car, the spring was phenomenal. We sat and read books and relaxed as the sun went down through the trees. We were right on the border of the Yukon territory, and would hit it the next day. But for now, it was time to relax.      

Check in next week as we head into the Yukon, and be sure to hit the links above this post to howlandphotography.com!