Day 30, Wednesdsy, Sept 7, Kiniskan Provincial Park, Hiway 37, Boya Lake Provincial Park, 5942 miles so far

I am posting this even though I just noticed thar my last several postings never made it out of my outbox yet due to no internet connection.

After what can only be described as a splendid evening with view that was out of this world, we left Kiniskan Provincial Park with a promise to return for more than one night in the future.  What a beautiful peaceful place. And it gave me a chance to jerry rig a solution to the problem of my passenger windshield wiper flying off in a rain yesterday.  Before the trip started I was getting ready to replace them but was told they were just fine.  In the future, I will follow my instincts.

There are essentiall three routes to drive to Alaska...take either the route from either Edmonton or Prince George to Dawson Creek, and pick up the ALCAN where it starts, or take route 16 to Kitwanga and take route 37 it's entire 449 mile, two-lanes-no-shoulders distance  to the ALCAN at Watson Lake.  Few people know about the later. This was my second time on that route.  If I told you how many times I said "Oh my God" on the two-day drive, you would think I had gone through some conversion to some religious cult.  What a road: empty except for  the mobile mansions making their way south before the really cold weather sets in, perhaps three small villages the entire route, mountains - many covered with snow- soaring thousands of feet before your eyes, lakes, rivers, streams, bridges, every shade of green imaginable, autumn colors blanketing the forests, twists and turns, hills and valleys, drop offs of hundreds of feet without guard rails  just feet away from your right tires,rest stops with scenic views every 20 miles, and more smells than a rescued dog named Donner could sink his nose into.  If people heading to Alaska ever found out about this road, the ALCAN would shut down.  And to think that I took it only because I was intrigued by the North to Alaska sign I saw when Sonntag and I took Hiway 16 from Prince Rupert in 2000. What a road.

Our plan for tonight was to stay at a pleasant camp just off the Alaskan Highway but only after stopping off a the spectacular Boya Lake Provincial Park on 37 where we stayed in 2013 and got a great display of the Northern Lights.  Although we arrived at 4:30 after only 180 miles on the road,   the setting here was too spectacular to stay for only one hour, so here we are once again in  that setting that inspires nothing short of awe. While here, we  got an invite to a home cooked dinner at our neighbors', Yan and Felix, who are heading up the Dalton just as we hope to.

Tomorrow we will head up to Dawson City, Yukon, but not by the one-day route I had intended.  My new plan is to take the 362-mile of mostly narrow dirt and gravel Campbell Highway, which means we will have to camp out somewhere along the way. This cuts off one day from an already no-spare-days-left schedule, but I will figure out some way to sculpt some solution to that minor problem.  The windshield wiper malfunction problem is the more difficult one to solve.

I had to store my food in the food cache tonight because of the bears in the area.  I do not want a repeat of what happened to me at Lake Tahoe in 2014 as Erde slept soundly through the the whole incident. If a bear does try to break into the Defender just feet away from us, my hope is that he is reactive with bears as much as he is with dogs.

The below photo is of our lakeside camp at Boya Lake Provincial Park. I took too many photos en route here to even consider taking the time to select one representative of the drive here. What a drive.  

 

Ed and Donner, from on the road

www.OnTheRoad.camp

P.S...I apologize and take full responsibility for all typos, errors and ambiguities in this message.  I do not have time to edit or even proof my messages.  Please do the best you can to interpret what I wrote.