Sunday, August 21, 2005
07/25/05-07/26/05- Muncho Lake to Watson Lake
7/25/05 Monday through 7/26/05 Tuesday
Today we drove from Muncho Lake to Watson’s Lake. The distance was 169 miles. Our traveling buddies were C W and Sandi Greenwood. The are from Tallapossa, GA. The just got married back in December so this is kind of a honeymoon for them. C W is a HVAC contractor. I think he is about retired, but plans to continue to provide some repair services to his customers. We are going to the
Downtown RV Park in Watson’s Lake, and we will have a lay over day on Wednesday. That means two nights in the same place and a chance to catch up on some chores.
We had a pretty uneventful day. The only wildlife we saw was a couple of wild horses and a small herd of buffalo. There was not as much history on this section as yesterday. We crossed the Trout River soon after we left. Se followed it for a while and saw some pretty views from the mountains down into its valley. The Trout emptied into the Liard River system. The Liard seems to be the major river in the area. The Indians named, it and Laird in their language means BIG. It is a big stream. We crossed the Lower Laird Bridge first. It is notable that this is the last remaining suspension bridge left on the Alaska Highway.
We had to bypass a couple of things which Mary and I would have taken time to visit if we were traveling alone. First, was the Laird River Hot Springs. I would have enjoyed a good soak to break up the drive. The second was the Smith River Falls. There was a hike of about a mile and a half to get to the falls, so it would have taken a couple of hours to get there and get pictures. We passed on it. Maybe next time we can do it.
We crossed the Historic Contact Creek without knowing it. We did see the Contact Creek Lodge, which was the site of the planning to make the Southern end of the Highway meet up with the Northern end. I guess the site of their forest contact was Contact Creek. Shortly after this we stopped at Iron Creek Lodge for lunch. All these names have some significance to the construction of the Alaska Highway. Iron Creek was so named because this is where the trucks had to stop and put on chains before they could get up the next mountain.
We crossed over from British Columbia to The Yukon Territory. At this point Yukon Highway 1 joined our route. We traveled many miles along this strip of road, which stilled showed the effect of a fire in 1982. The fire burned down more than 400,000 acres of forest. It is still far from recovered from the damage.
We got into our campground about 3:00. We got all set up and got ready for our day off. We had 30-amp electricity and even had free cable TV. I washed the RV and the car at their free RV Wash. It was a brush that fit on the end of a long water hose and required a lot of scrubbing on my part. but it was good to have it cleaned up. We had driven through a construction area that was completely unpaved and muddy.
On Tuesday, 7/26/05, we all went to the Sign Post Forest. Our Wagon Master had a sign made for the entire caravan and then anyone who had an individual sign could also put it up. There is, of course, a story about a homesick soldier putting a sign there with his name and hometown on it, back in 1943. It kind of developed into a tradition for travelers going up the Alaska Highway to put up a sign.
In 2004 a count was taken and there were more than 57,000 signs and they estimate that 2000+ are added each year. Mary and I didn’t have a sign, but we found a place there where we could get a piece of 1X8 about 18 inches long, paint and brush, and a hammer and two nails for $7.50. We made a sign and got someone to take a picture of us beside it.
We saw a really nice presentation on the size of our universe followed by about a half hour on the Northern Lights. This was at the Northern Lights Theater. It is so comfortable lying back in those soft chairs looking up at the sky and listing to the soft piano music. I must admit that I dozed off for a few minutes. After we got back to the camp we had dinner in the Mess Tent. It literally was a tent. They took your order outside and cooked it in a separate little building, but you actually eat in a tent. We figured that we should not pass up a chance to eat in a mess tent while we were in the Yukon. Mary went out and walked around the lake with her camera after supper. She got nice pictures of the lake and some great wildflower shots.
We had a small problem, which we had to have help correcting. Our right turn signal stopped working on the car. It worked fine when the car was not hooked to the coach. The coach light worked fine, but it would not make the car signal work when they we connected. I got Billy, our technician, to check it out and with the help of Richard Mulford from Maine, he was able to rewire the head on the connecting cable and make it work. So now we are all set to go to Whitehorse, YT.
Today we drove from Muncho Lake to Watson’s Lake. The distance was 169 miles. Our traveling buddies were C W and Sandi Greenwood. The are from Tallapossa, GA. The just got married back in December so this is kind of a honeymoon for them. C W is a HVAC contractor. I think he is about retired, but plans to continue to provide some repair services to his customers. We are going to the
Downtown RV Park in Watson’s Lake, and we will have a lay over day on Wednesday. That means two nights in the same place and a chance to catch up on some chores.
We had a pretty uneventful day. The only wildlife we saw was a couple of wild horses and a small herd of buffalo. There was not as much history on this section as yesterday. We crossed the Trout River soon after we left. Se followed it for a while and saw some pretty views from the mountains down into its valley. The Trout emptied into the Liard River system. The Liard seems to be the major river in the area. The Indians named, it and Laird in their language means BIG. It is a big stream. We crossed the Lower Laird Bridge first. It is notable that this is the last remaining suspension bridge left on the Alaska Highway.
We had to bypass a couple of things which Mary and I would have taken time to visit if we were traveling alone. First, was the Laird River Hot Springs. I would have enjoyed a good soak to break up the drive. The second was the Smith River Falls. There was a hike of about a mile and a half to get to the falls, so it would have taken a couple of hours to get there and get pictures. We passed on it. Maybe next time we can do it.
We crossed the Historic Contact Creek without knowing it. We did see the Contact Creek Lodge, which was the site of the planning to make the Southern end of the Highway meet up with the Northern end. I guess the site of their forest contact was Contact Creek. Shortly after this we stopped at Iron Creek Lodge for lunch. All these names have some significance to the construction of the Alaska Highway. Iron Creek was so named because this is where the trucks had to stop and put on chains before they could get up the next mountain.
We crossed over from British Columbia to The Yukon Territory. At this point Yukon Highway 1 joined our route. We traveled many miles along this strip of road, which stilled showed the effect of a fire in 1982. The fire burned down more than 400,000 acres of forest. It is still far from recovered from the damage.
We got into our campground about 3:00. We got all set up and got ready for our day off. We had 30-amp electricity and even had free cable TV. I washed the RV and the car at their free RV Wash. It was a brush that fit on the end of a long water hose and required a lot of scrubbing on my part. but it was good to have it cleaned up. We had driven through a construction area that was completely unpaved and muddy.
On Tuesday, 7/26/05, we all went to the Sign Post Forest. Our Wagon Master had a sign made for the entire caravan and then anyone who had an individual sign could also put it up. There is, of course, a story about a homesick soldier putting a sign there with his name and hometown on it, back in 1943. It kind of developed into a tradition for travelers going up the Alaska Highway to put up a sign.
In 2004 a count was taken and there were more than 57,000 signs and they estimate that 2000+ are added each year. Mary and I didn’t have a sign, but we found a place there where we could get a piece of 1X8 about 18 inches long, paint and brush, and a hammer and two nails for $7.50. We made a sign and got someone to take a picture of us beside it.
We saw a really nice presentation on the size of our universe followed by about a half hour on the Northern Lights. This was at the Northern Lights Theater. It is so comfortable lying back in those soft chairs looking up at the sky and listing to the soft piano music. I must admit that I dozed off for a few minutes. After we got back to the camp we had dinner in the Mess Tent. It literally was a tent. They took your order outside and cooked it in a separate little building, but you actually eat in a tent. We figured that we should not pass up a chance to eat in a mess tent while we were in the Yukon. Mary went out and walked around the lake with her camera after supper. She got nice pictures of the lake and some great wildflower shots.
We had a small problem, which we had to have help correcting. Our right turn signal stopped working on the car. It worked fine when the car was not hooked to the coach. The coach light worked fine, but it would not make the car signal work when they we connected. I got Billy, our technician, to check it out and with the help of Richard Mulford from Maine, he was able to rewire the head on the connecting cable and make it work. So now we are all set to go to Whitehorse, YT.
