First, after 2 days here, I am quite pleased. We still need to manage our clothes (I know I brought way too many clothes), but we have washed linens, dishes, and pots and are finding a good home for things. I needed scissors a minute ago and went to the right drawer first try! We went out this afternoon and Sal got us back home without having to use google maps! Both positive signs. And the cable/internet guy hooked us up today. Yay, internet!! (Grey is out of the closet now.)
Beds are on the way, but we are really quite cozy mostly living in the living room for now. Kind of like a studio apartment with two bathrooms and two large clothes sorting areas.
The Alaska Highway was much better then I expected, and very different from what I expected. Like Sal said earlier, the road was mostly pretty good. We were conscious of gas and got it frequently, but it mostly timed with bathroom stops. At no point did we worry about finding gas. I had thought it might be a problem. Getting gas was different. Very rarely did we just swipe our card and pump. The stations seemed to me like 1950s gas stations. Often times they were kind of rough looking and might have two pumps. Once they took only cash. Canadian cash, which we didn’t have, so we had to pass. Once I had to pump and take a picture of the liters gotten and cost and go in and show the picture to the worker. And another time I gave my drivers license to the worker, went out and pumped my gas, went back in, paid, then collected my license. I can’t even use the term cashier. Cashier brings to my mind a different image than the people working most of these stations. I can’t really describe it.
Most towns we went through had a gas station, maybe a combination gas/restaurant/lodging building. Many places had fewer than 100 people living there. There would be gravel turnoffs from the highway. Until the last day, we never saw homes where people might live. I don’t know where people lived.
Sal had to tell me many times that old doesn’t mean dirty. We stayed in one “modern” hotel. Sal joked that we got the honeymoon room; it had a portable fireplace and a jacuzzi tub. Other places were like 50’s motels. We’d park in front of the door and enter from outside. I think we stayed in some of the nicer places on the route. I had researched lodging but I was still surprised (shocked, actually) at how different these places were from a Courtyard or Hampton Inn. But they were clean, although extremely outdated furnishings. The brown bedspread that had horrified me the first night was kind of standard. No white duvets, for sure.
This is a typical nice lodging, gas station and restaurant. There was another restaurant across the street, Buckshot Betty’s, so we had to stop for lunch. Pretty good sandwiches.
Sal got her love of driving from our dad, I inherited a different gene from “Speedy” Wassom. When entering Canada and seeing the posted limit was 100, I was excited until I realized that was 62 MPH. The highest speed I saw in Canada was 110 kilometers, 68 MPH. Sometimes posted speed was 50 KPH. Know what that is? Ridiculous, that’s what it is. I was glad Sal did the majority of the driving. When you are on a good road, seeing no one at all for kilometers at a time, and have hundreds of miles to go before you stop, I had a hard time driving that slowly. And there was very little traffic. That was another surprise for me. I thought in summer the road would be more heavily traveled. No. We would see cars, trucks, RVs and motorcycles at gas stations, motels and restaurants, but rarely would you see another vehicle in your rear view mirror or come up on one. They would pass occasionally going the other direction.
The largest town was Whitehorse. It was a regular town with restaurants and street lights and businesses. Fort Nelson was a large town for the road; it had several streets and an A&W, but they had no root beer floats, the hotel clerk told me. They had sold their ice cream machine to Jucies down the block. I went to get us milkshakes because that was the day Sal had to drive an extra two hours. Jucies made me think of a little candy store out of West Side Story. But a good milkshake. There were a couple other towns that had multiple streets, like Haines Junction, but by far, small, small communities.
I’d like to say most people were nice. Some were. Some warmed up the more you talked. Some were not. Most of the route was not a smile and say hello kind of place.
But the scenery. Oh, the scenery. It was a beautiful route. Rarely in the mountains, but mountains in view most all the time. Everything was so green. Beautiful forests, lakes that rivaled the famous Lake Louise and mountains of all types, jagged, snow-topped and forested. How many times did we say, “Oh, look at that!” How many pictures can you take of scenery so breathtaking. I’ll share a few.
We’re finally here. And we celebrated last night with pizza and beer. So here’s to adventures!!
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