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!
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