The Road to Alaska ( and back ) - In Progress

[Arruba]

Road trip!!! We’re long overdue for one & I’d love to try Alaska. For now I’ll live vicariously through you. Keep on posting.

Me too. I’ve been to both Alaska and Canada a few times, but have never driven clear through, or even near to clear through. I’m personally looking forward to what you have to share about the Cassiar. For me it’s the shortest/quickest way to the far north. At least according to Google.

Good luck.

 

[vanish1982]

Working from Alta Lake State Park was pretty great. We set up the awning for once considering we would be here the next 4 days. We had to move to our new spot midway through the first day, but didn't realize how good it would be until we were set up. Ironically this spot had been open the night before and we elected not to take it.











We actually put our water and electric hookups to use for this portion, something we hadn't really planned on. DW especially liked the water.

 

[vanish1982]

Sorry my pics are a bit lacking. My wife has more but it's a bit of a pain to pull them on my phone.

Friday, the girls went out for one last hike while I finished up work.



Once work was done, we packed up and rolled on towards Canada 🇨🇦



Customs was straight forward, and within a couple of minutes we were in BC and headed north!



The drive up mostly consisted of lake after lake. It was more densely populated than I expected.



Finally, we turned off onto a different road and headed up out of the river vallleys. We picked out a state rec site by a small lake and headed half a dozen km down a dirt road to find it already occupied by more camps than spots. Didn't expect that! We pushed on to the next one and it too was full up. Luckily, we had spotted a side shoot that had potential and upon further scouting determined it would work. There's not as much room as this photo makes it appear.



Dinner prep, Dog and dogs.



Someone being a troublemaker

 

[vanish1982]

We started the next morning with coffee, chocolate croissants and then a little exploration.

 

[vanish1982]

Back on the road, we stopped for ham and cheese sandwich picnic lunch at mile 108 house and toured the historic buildings.

 

[Anthony Hitchings]

be careful about eating in bed in bear country. Some of those crumbs may smell good to a bear.

 

[vanish1982]

As we approached our intended turn for our camp site, a large construction truck was blocking the road. We thought the road was closed. As we got distant, I saw him turn around, guess it was just bad timing.

We pushed on to the Yellowhead highway and found another campsite half an hour after turning west. I actually forgot to take a pic until we were packing up the next day.





Both girls causing trouble.

 

[kudzu]

Your daughter is adorable, but the pose your dog stuck on the picnic table… 😂 🤣

Beuatiful scenario from the campsite.

 

[vanish1982]

From here, it was a good drive West and then North upnthe Cassiar. Before we got to that point, we took one last chance to handle our chores ( ie WIFI ) as we had a suspicion cell signal would evaporate up there. We also topped up our fresh food supply and treated ourselves to Tim Horton's, something not terribly exotic but we hadn't done. I grew up in Buffalo where it had crossed the border and hadn't been to one since.









Our first glacier of the trip.



The Cassiar certainly has some nice scenery but the trees grow right up to the road, making views difficult to come by.

We really wanted to take a side trip to Hyder, AK but time and the weather was not on our side. We arrived at the junction about an hour past when it might have been feasible, and with a freezing rain storm to boot. Camp that night ended up being a pull off not too far from the highway past Meziadin Junction. I was tired and parked us the wrong direction 😑

 

[Arruba]

Keep posting, I’m watching.

 

[toucan]

The drive from Prince George down to Kitwanga is absolutely gorgeous. I'd love to do it again. Went down that way in the early 90's all the way to Prince Rupert.

 

[vanish1982]

Continuing up the Cassiar. Lunch stop.






We both saw the rock coming off the logging truck. At least it's currently hidden behind the mirror shield.



Another break at a really pretty lake.





We probably could have made the Yukon, but found a camp site we liked on the Dease River so decided to stay the night.

 

[vanish1982]

I really dropped the ball on this thread, sorry! Spoiler alert we made it to Homer and have been very very busy. I will finish the trip up eventually.

 

[Wakita46]

I really dropped the ball on this thread, sorry! Spoiler alert we made it to Homer and have been very very busy. I will finish the trip up eventually.

No worries. Looking forward to hearing about your trip and seeing more pictures.

 

[Arruba]

No worries. Looking forward to hearing about your trip and seeing more pictures.

Me too

 

[vanish1982]

I started a reply on this one several times but just didn't have the space to finish!

It was onward to the Yukon!



Alaska Highway had just a bit more traffic.



Past Whitehorse, the views really improved. We also saw a few bears, elk, caribou and bison, but not in good photo locations.



We camped relatively close to the highway, but tucked on the other side of some trees next to a lake. We were able to watch the waterfowl from the dining table.

 

[vanish1982]

Continuing through the Yukon!

The white dots are dall sheep. Trust me.





The last hundred miles of the AK highway through the Yukon was noticeably more ... humpy ( frost heaves ). At times it was like riding in a boat, where it felt like you were going over waves. While awkward, it didn't pose too much of a problem for driving. After crossing the border into Alaska itself, we were immediately greeted with road crews ( and a significant weather shift).



The roads in the US were dramatically worse. Instead of humps, there were holes. It seemed to me like a different material was used for the road surface. I hit a couple pretty hard shortly after crossing the border before I became more aware of what we were dealing with.



As we were leaving the visitor center, I felt like our popup was leaning to the left. I checked the tires and all looked good, so moved on. My spidey senses were tingling though, as I could swear I used to be able to see a couple inches of tire below the trailer in my mirror ( I had been watching it in my peripheral vision for a few thousand miles ). As we hit another construction stoppage, popped out to take another look as it occurred to me a flat tire wasn't the only possible problem - I should check the leaf springs.



Shizzle. There is definitely a gap where two of the leaves are missing, and the main leaf is bending. I checked the clearance above the tire, and we were still good there as there were a couple welded on Us preventing the leaf spring from going up any higher.

Note: in the top left of the photo you can see I missed checking the rearward clearance! The tire was in fact rubbing on the frame and we were really lucky it didn't wear out.

Not having a ton of familiarity with leaf springs, I slowed down, puckered up and finished the 70 miles to Tok, AK. There aren't a ton of options but we were able to find a place that would be able to look at it in the morning. I found a photo my wife took later that gives a good idea of the lean.



We actually had the option of camping in the popup in the lot, but given that the suspension is supportive of your weight and not the stabilizers, I thought it a good idea to get a motel for the night. We also decided to order dinner. Fast Eddy's in Tok is pretty good!



After putting the family to bed, I decided it was a day worthy of a beverage and walked back to Fast Eddy's.



You might notice the timing of my stopping posting correlated with this incident. Indeed, it took a lot of my energy and that's why I lost my momentum on keeping this thread up to date.

 

[vanish1982]

The shop had mentioned they do a LOT of leaf springs, so as long as it was a common model, they'd probably have one in stock and it would be a quick job.

We tried hard to pretend we intended to be in Tok for the day, and went out fishing for the morning.








We got back to town, had some lunch and checked in on the trailer. Pretty much got a shrug from the desk. Hmm, maybe this wasn't going to be so simple. I tried *real hard* to be easy going. I'm generally not very good at that. 😂







The day ended without any word from the shop. While I understood we're pretty far removed from anything here, I would have given a toe for some sort of status update like "We took the old one off, don't have one but we're having a new one shipped in" or even "No idea what we need, prepare to be here awhile."

 

[vanish1982]

We stopped in at the shop just in case, and they had an update! They'd found a spring and were bringing it down from Fairbanks. It should be noted that during this ordeal I had been doing a ton of research on exactly what springs are on our popup and I was much more prepared should this ever happen in the future.

So, we went fishing again.













When we got back to town, we found out the part had not made its way down as planned and we would need to stay another night, but that our popup should be ready to go first thing in the morning. A slight bit of panic ensued as it was now Friday night and both places we stayed before were full. A local tip led us to an AirBnb that was priced similarly to the motel rooms but way more awesome.





We decided to splurge a little and got some excellent Thai food for dinner.