As we were coming to the motel office to check out, we saw a truck pull up in front, with Alaska plates and a horse trailer.
In the restaurant we wound up sitting near their table, and I struck up a conversation. They were bringing the horses up to Anchorage from Colorado, and had just picked them up at Watson Lake’s rodeo grounds (probably the northernmost rodeo grounds in the world) where they had boarded them overnight. They warned us of a construction zone near Liard River, which we would reach on our day’s drive, and recommended a place for lunch where they had had dinner the night before — more for its decor than its food (though they did recommend the food), but we decided to give it a try.
After breakfast we split up to try to handle separate errands. I had bought and made out a couple more postcards, and wanted to find a post office to mail them. Following the directions I had received from the motel desk clerk proved to be a frustrating and futile pursuit; I never saw anything that resembled a post office, even though I was aware that a Canadian post office needn’t look anything like an outpost of the U.S. Postal Service.
Finally giving up, I rendezvoused with Chris, and we headed out — again, as in Beaver Creek, expecting the Bronco’s leftover fuel from the day before to get us well on our way. That proved to be a mistake.
In the Yukon Territory, the Alaska Highway is pretty much all the authorities have to promote development on. I should have taken the hint from the utter absence of development on the previous day’s stretch in B.C. to suspect that the province, having as it does Canada’s third largest city, might have other fish to fry when it comes to encouraging development. Those driving up the Alaska Highway can take heart as they pass through this unpopulated corner of British Columbia with the knowledge that once they cross the 60th parallel they will once again find themselves in something resembling civilization.
The “official” Yukon-B.C. border is just outside Watson Lake, and as we passed through the rolling country lying between the Cassiar Mountains and the northern spur of the actual Rocky Mountains the sun climbed into a cloudless sky. Our lunch destination was the Northern Rockies Lodge at Muncho Lake. It was a little more than halfway between Watson Lake and Fort Nelson.
Many miles later, Chris and I agreed that a comfort stop was in order, but the first place we came to that hadn’t closed for the season had only an outhouse. Several miles farther along, I was antsy about gas, and we found a place at Liard River (we never discovered the story of the fur spiders) where I bought ten litres of gas at an outrageously high price — I figured that would get me to Muncho Lake, and it did. In fact, it was when I filled up at Muncho that I discovered I was getting much better mileage than I thought I was, even accounting for the fact I was converting litres as though they were quarts, four to a gallon (litres are somewhat larger, being about 3.8 to the gallon). The pump attendant at the latter place told me that the valley in which the lake sits has a climate not unlike Fairbanks, though perhaps with more bitter cold and less snow.
The Northern Rockies Lodge lived up to its billing and then some. It’s a big log building, and the dining room faces toward the lake and the mountains beyond. The windows rise three storeys high. The prices on the menu weren’t quite that acrobatic, but we judiciously decided to settle for the soup-and-salad lunch.
If the people there can do with mere soup and salad what they did with the lunch they served us, the real meals must be more than worth the money. On your drive to Alaska, if you can contrive to stop at the Northern Rockies Lodge — even if you can only afford what we had — stop there and eat.
Now, somewhere along the route of our trip, I don’t recall for certain but I’m pretty sure it was this day, we passed along a stretch of highway where the brush was in the process of being cleared and the brushpiles burned. At one point near this stretch, I saw an actual buffalo sitting beside the highway, calmly chewing its cud. Farther east, along the border between Alberta and the Northwest Territories, there is a Canadian national park called Wood Buffalo. I decided I had seen a specimen of this relative of the plains buffalo of farther south. The startlement of seeing it so far north (even though of course there are buffalo roaming near Delta Junction, Alaska, and a former neighbor of ours in North Pole has a small herd) probably accounts for my confusion.
UPDATE, August 2003: The first photo on this page describing Jim Teresco’s 2001 Alaska trip, was taken along the stretch I’m describing. I don’t remember seeing a warning sign about buffalo, but Jim and his friend didn’t see any actual buffalo either. So I guess I got the better of the deal.
I do know for sure it was Monday that we passed through Stone Mountain Provincial Park, (not to be confused with Georgia’s Stone Mountain Park...) where we saw several stone sheep and four caribou. This was the only place where the promise of seeing wildlife was kept. Elsewhere caribou and moose (and even — on Day 2 as we passed through the Kluane Lake region — elk) proved too shy to present themselves where they could be seen. I did spot a deer, and we both saw a coyote and a fox, but none of these were where signs had been conspicuously placed warning of wildlife. Your mileage may vary.
Fort Nelson lies at about the point where our route would turn to a more southerly direction from its easterly trend of the last few days. It’s a sizeable town, big enough that The Milepost has a map of it in its pages — even showing the post office. We checked into our motel, had a bit of trouble with the air conditioner until the desk told us where to find the light switch that powers the electrical outlet, and then settled in. There was no restaurant on the premises, but I drove a few blocks to a short-order place and brought us each back a dinner.
