Days 2 and 3 along The Alaska Highway - June 26 & 27

It’s not the destination so much as it is the journey along the Al-Can Highway that constitutes the real adventure.  We’ve scooted along the eastern border of the Rocky Mountains for countless miles, the forests and rivers stretching out endlessly in front of us.  It sprinkles enough rain to dirty the windshield briefly every few hours but is otherwise quite warm, the skies clearing from the dreadful British Columbia wildfire smoke the further north we travel.

                                          

                                             

Villages are far distanced, gas is sparse and outrageously priced, and the highway can be quite rough in spots.  Fairly 80% of the traffic on the highway in either direction are campers, trailers, and vans.  The remaining 20% are large diesels carrying mostly fuel; this is big gas and oil country, and large oil storage facilities dot the landscape. 

 

One reads that the sun doesn’t ever really set in this far-north summer country, but to experience it during a 0230 bathroom break is quite beguiling and not a little disconcerting.  It’s completely wild; we have only a few hours of mild dusk before the sun rises above the horizon again for another 20 hours.   

 

 

Night two was spent in an old abandoned provincial park campground deep in the woods with a handful of fellow sojourners.   Day three was full of wildlife sightings including bison, sheep, and moose.  Night three brought us to Liard River Hot Springs, the most aesthetically pristine and well presented hot springs we’ve ever visited.  After three hours in the crystal clear and variably hot waters, we truly morphed into limp placid noodles and slept like the dead.