Alaska or Bust: Day 6 and 7 on the road... Ft Nelson, BC-> Teslin, YT

Day 6 On the road… Ft Nelson, BC à Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park (277 miles)

This was an absolutely amazing drive!! Almost immediately after leaving Ft Nelson, BC civilization as I have always known it ceased to exist except for the Alaska highway. Any resemblance of a “town” was pretty much non-existent. There were several towns along the way but they consisted of a gas station, campground and lodge/motel. Muncho Lake was the largest community we passed today. There was a gas station there that charged the equivalent of $7.40/gallon for gas… no thank-you!! But they did have a k-12 school and a few homes in the area.

The drive through the Rockies was spectacular. This drive is said to be the best and most scenic on the entire Alaska Highway and I can totally believe it! There was a lot of climbing and descending at 8-10% grade on multiple “S” curves that totally scared the hell out of me. But then again I don’t care much for roller coasters. I loved the scenery, the Muncho Lake area the most beautiful to me. There is a lot of copper in the mountains draining into the lake. When the copper leaches into the lake it gives it the most amazing blue color. The highway travels alongside the entire 7 miles length of the lake, it is totally amazing. We are going to try to camp there on our way back down the highway.

We arrived at Liard Hot Springs around 3:00, quite a short day for us. This is the 1^st time the truck and trailer had to be backed up into a camping spot… YIKES!! Our site didn’t have a good angle. A very nice man came along and helped Tom out. Thank you!!! Needless to say we were both getting a little frustrated. No electric and no water today so the set up was very fast and we were off to the hot springs. There are several pools, the top one was closed because a rare hot water snail was found to be living there. That is the hottest of the pools at 125 degrees (way too hot for me!!) The 2^nd pool was plenty hot, even for the queen of hot tubs! I couldn’t tolerate it but the water flowed over a small waterfall into another pool and was amazingly relaxing. We hung out in the lower pool for about an hour, the further down stream we went the cooler the water. At the end, I the hung out at the falls with the very hot water running over my neck and shoulders, how heavenly!!!

Wildlife spotted today; stone sheep and bison.

The weather was cloudy this morning and cleared up this afternoon then rained in the evening. Today has been a super spectacular day, the best so far!! J

Day 7 on the road… Liard Hot Spring Provincial Park to Teslin,, Yukon (277 miles) YUKON Territory!!!!

This morning we were on the road by 8:00 AM after going on a short hike hoping to see a moose in the wetlands near the hot springs, no such luck. Today’s drive was very pretty, some mountains, lots of rolling hills and next to no civilization. The biggest town we went through was Watson Lake with a population of 987. We had to pick up a couple of things at the grocery store; sliced deli turkey was $12.20 lb, eggs were $4.95/doz and Campbell’s soup was $4.19/can, local beer is $14.29/6 pack of cans. We bought the essentials until we can do some ‘proper’ shopping at Whitehorse tomorrow.

The excitement of the day is that we saw 3 black bears along side the road. We noticed that if the side of the road is wide with lots of wildflowers and the sun is out, they seem to be out too.

Tonight we have a campground all to ourselves, The Dawson Peaks Campground, it is located on Teslin Lakes about 7 miles south of the town of Teslin. The owners asked us if the highway was closed somewhere south of here today because there was so little traffic. We had noticed that as well, sometimes it would be a very long time before we would see another vehicle traveling in either direction.

We crossed the continental divide that divides 2 of the largest drainage systems in North America – the Yukon River and Mackenzie River watersheds. Water draining to the west forms the Swift River and drains into the Yukon River and continues northwest for 2300 miles to the Bering Sea and ultimately the Pacific Ocean. Everything draining east forms the Rancheria River that flows into the Mackenzie River and empties into the Beaufort Sea (Arctic Ocean) after a journey of 2650 miles (The Milepost 2010).

Tomorrow we are heading to Takhini Hot Spings about a 300 mile drive. Today we hit the 3000 miles mark, not bad for 7 days on the road.

Kate