The Alternative Alaska Highway

There's the Alaska Highway (which we drove as a family in 1975 back when it was dirt the whole way), and then there's the Alternative Alaska Highway. Naturally we took the latter. Fewer RVs, still some stretches of dirt, and large expanses of stupendously uninhabited wilderness. It's hard to get your head around some of the numbers - Yukon province is 25% bigger than Zimbabwe, but the total population is 37,000 people (about the same as Rusape), three-quarters of whom live in the capital Whitehorse. The rest of the province is very empty indeed. (And the few people that do live there are extremely colourful, as you can imagine!).

The start of the Stewart Cassiar Highway

For the map geeks, this is the route. From Prince George in BC you head west towards Prince Rupert, and then veer north on the Stewart Cassiar highway. Stewart is well worth a side-trip (we watched a black bear fishing for salmon, camped beneath a glacier and ate ice cream from an old school bus here), but Cassiar bequeathed its name to the road and then promptly ceased to exist. So don't bother looking for it.

Bear Glacier in Stewart. We camped here….

Another stunning campsite - Boya lake

Dawson City

Up in Yukon you then briefly join the Alaska Highway, keeping a watchful eye out for those retirees in their RVs (towing cars bigger than ours just as "runarounds"!), and then veer north at Whitehorse on the gold rush trail towards Dawson City (whose population swelled in 1897 from 50 to 40,000 in 18 months). From here you take the sublime Top of the World Highway and enter Alaska at the tiny border post of Poker Creek (population 3). Thence to the delightfully quirky community of Chicken (whose bar now proudly sports a shiny new Zimbabwean thousand dollar bill on its front door) and finally rejoining the tar at Tok.

The lonely border post at the Top of the World

From Jasper to Anchorage took us 8 days to cover around 3,500 kms. But what a breathtakingly beautiful drive it was. Wish we could just re-live it all over again in slomo!

A Typical Day On The Road...

Gus is always up early, making coffee, lighting the fire and catching up on various off-line requirements… 

Max usually finds it more difficult to wake up, even with the offer of a hot cup of tea…

A healthy breakfast of yoghurt, blueberries, granola. And sometimes, we even get fire-burnt toast...

Every few days, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do…

 …that includes the daily shovel-necessary requirements!

 Sometimes, we even have some recreational time…

On the road...

… this is how we spend most of each day…

 …and rewarded by some magnificent views along the way...

Lunch time! Spent anywhere along the road where we like the look of…

Around 5pm, sometimes as late as 6pm, we’ll find a camp. Easy when there’s a National Park or Provincial Park to offer us an official site…

 …more challenging when we have to find a wild place somewhere off the road.

It’s always important to share our identity with neighbours…

 Sometimes (mmm), Max even does a bit of homework...

…though he much prefers work of the manual labour kind (really!)

 Supper, mostly cooked by Mands, though occasionally helped by her menfolk...

…helped along greatly by some very good micro-brewed Canadian beer

After supper, every evening, we have a Read Aloud. Our current book is the last in the Alex Rider series; gripping stuff!

Then, of course, someone has to do the washing up - but do not be taken in by this particular picture…

…more often than not, it gets done by Gus!

A little more story before bed. But as we travel further North, it ain’t dark at bedtime anymore!

Alaska, Alaska!

Alaska at last!

We made it! After a solid week of driving from Jasper, here we are in Palmer Alaska! An epic and amazing journey, on which more to follow shortly, and arrived just in time to collect Ben from the airport in Anchorage this evening. (He's been travelling for the past 36 hours himself, so probably good that we make it to the airport on time!).

Our arrival was through the tiny Poker Creek border post on the dirt road from the famous gold rush era Dawson City to quirky community of Chicken (so-named because the first white settlers in the 1880s wanted to name it after the abundant local ptarmigans but, after establishing that none of them had any idea how to spell "Ptarmigan", settled on Chicken instead as a workable compromise).

Probably the tiniest, certainly the friendlies, border post into the USA anywhere!

The Chicken jokes just keep on comin'

 After a night in Chicken, where we had our first, modestly successful, attempt at gold panning, we came on down to Palmer, and here we are, having managed to score ourselves a bed and an unbelievable view with our friends Cathy and Mark. What a luck!

View from our bedroom this morning. Note runway with Supercub in foreground!

Bear-y Exciting!

Having had several glimpses of black bears during our drive through BC over the past month, they have nonetheless all been from the car and, though wonderful, rather frustrating. At Fish Creek, near Stewart, in a small pocket of Alaska called Hyder (a proudly self-proclaimed ghost-town), we got to experience our first 'real' sighting of a single black bear, who had come down to the creek to find a meal in the spawning trout. Watch the video of this gorgeous fella…

Canada Parks - we love you!

We are no strangers to National Parks; as a family, we could probably say that a hefty percentage of our holidays have been spent in varying conditions of Parks’ comfort across Africa and a few others elsewhere. Camping through Canada’s western province of British Columbia has, however, raised the bar in our minds. Not, as one might assume, in terms of comfort or convenience, but in a much more purist sense of what outdoor living is – and should be – all about: sustainability.

This is what we have appreciated from our three-week camping in BC National Parks so far:

·      *Clean sites. There are plenty of trash bins clearly marked at frequent intervals, catering for regular trash, as well as for all recyclable items

·     * Energy efficient. Parks Canada is very green-conscious! Most bathroom and other water taps are fixed with an internal spring, thus reducing water wastage; many washrooms are run on solar lighting

·    *  Passionate about nature. Reminders about respecting the environment and its natural inhabitants, big and small, are everywhere

·    

  *Informative. At every campsite, there is a noticeboard giving local information about the area, weather, a map, bear warnings, historical info, and reminders about appropriate camping behavior (which is encouraged during the “Quiet Hours” between 11pm – 7am)

·     

 *      *Resources. No matter how rural the campsite is, there will always be a designated tent pad, and more often than not, a picnic table and campfire grill. At larger camps, there is often a communal picnic site (for day-trippers), a social hut (more for the winter months) and even an interactive centre, where informative/educational movies are shown, or talks given

·      *Clean water. Taps provided for fill-ups everywhere!

·      *Efficient infrastructure. Parks Canada provide a wide network of Information Centres, which are run by incredibly friendly, helpful and knowledgeable staff, who hand out detailed info and maps about all the available activities (easy to hard level hikes, backcountry camping, interactive boardwalks, historical tours, etc)

·      *Uniform system. Procedures are reliable and predictable wherever you go, however remote. A standardized pamphlet is given at every National Park, that gives a general map of the area, as well as a more focused map of the general hiking routes.