The Second Day
I knew that I had a long drive ahead of me, but I took advantage of the time difference to sleep in a bit. After all, I had been on the road for some ten hours yesterday, so I figured I was owed. Yeah. Sure. What did I know.
In the event, I couldn’t sleep past 5:00, so up I got, checked out, filled up, and was on the road out of PG by 530. My initial miles were hampered by a rather temperamental GPS, which insisted that the road I was using to get to Watson Lake (supposedly 1225 km away) was wrong…I should be going via Dawson Creek, not Highway 16 and 37. For something like an hour the pesky little gadget kept trying to tell me to turn around, until, somewhere around Vanderhoof it realized that I was right and it was wrong.
I must admit I have a weakness for early morning drives (however little I muster up the energy to go on any, having an equal weakness for sleeping in). The roads are still and empty; the first yellow and red tints herald the coming of the sun, and all seems right with the world. Here it was even better, because there was mist in the valleys and the dips of the road, and I felt like I was moving silently through a dreamworld where every now and then, the Christmas fairy lights of a lit-up truck would become visible in the distance and then emerge like a gaily illuminated titanic Titanic from a fog bank, to vanish again in a muffled roar of sound and backwash as
it passed me.
I passed through Burns Landing about 745 and about 150km in. There was nothing special about it, really: I just liked its old fashioned look and feel, in its look and atmosphere. A place, one might say, where older, more solid values still hold sway, and where time has almost, but not quite, passed by. I liked the neat lawns, the store fronts that were tidy and evoked a sort of nostalgic Normal Rockwell memory (however implausible that might be). I just took note of these feelings and moved on. Here and there I paused to take some pictures: a bridge, mist over a lake…that kind of thing.
About an hour further on, I was hungry and as I was passing through a small hamlet called Topley, I spotted this bright and cheerful grill with its open sign out and cars parked in front.
I stopped and went in, and it was a homey sort of place, woodstove in the corner, mom-and-pop operation going strong and – I swear this is true – pigs all over the place. Dolls and figurines and stuffed animals and pictures….more than you can shake a stick at. Earl, the pleasant, tattooed owner, bustled out to take my order and since I was hungry, recommended the Spanish omelette. Having disposed of that he promptly brought out three stuffed pigs, one after the other, which (respectively) oinked when I pulled its tail, sang “Too Sexy for my shirt” and sang a beach boys ballad at me while sashaying across the table. I haven’t laughed that hard for ages, and promptly ran out for my camera.
And good pictures aside, I must admit that that breakfast was the largest I have had in some time, and a fantastic cookup. I managed all but the last slice of toast, and gulped down coffee while listening to the regulars, who always inhabit towns like this, talk about their lives and their issues, since they all know each other for such a long time. I can think of worse things than to retire into a small place like Topley, and hang out with Earl every morning.
After that, refueled and ready to go, I put the pedal to the metal, and didn’t stop much for the next few hours. I drove through Perow, Houstion, Barrett, Telkwa, Smithers, Evelyn, Moricetown and New Hazleton with barely a pause except to fill up, and ended up turning North into Highway 37 at Kitwanga somewhere around 1030. Here things changed. I was no longer on the TransCanada: I was on a northern-heading highway with not much going on, and perhaps for the first time I appreciated that there might be dangers here if anything happened to the car: the road was practically deserted: of cars, of people, of towns, even villages. It was a solitary drive, and I began paying strict attention to my fuel levels: yes I had fuel, but I also had 755 km still left to go and even 2x25L cans might not carry me to the other stations. It might...but maybe not.
Things finally got me nervous at Meziadin Junction, where I was down to just over half a tank and 600km to go, and no station in sight: the map and the signs said that Bell 2, 200km up the road, had the next fuel, but Stewart, to the west (and out of my way) 60km away, did.
I took the road for Stewart, cussing in five languages, because I wanted to hit Watson Lake before sunset: I had not made a reservation, hoping I could wing it, and this would take an hour out of my budget. But in retrospect, inconvenience and tiredness aside, I’m sort of glad I did. The road to Stewart, which is right on the lower Alaskan border, passes by and between some of the most magnificent mountain scenery I’ve seen since I left Central Asia.
My map says the Cambrian Icefield is there, and I certainly got an eyeful of that, though, frustratingly, I had no time to seriously stop and explore. But what a sight: huge, awe-inspiring, pretty much unknown to those I gossip with.
So yes, the side trip was worth it. I got my fuel in Stewart, noted the “kilmometer zero” green distance marker, but didn’t hang around – and here’s a town just begging to be photographed, I think – and hightailed it back north again.
I have to note in passing that this road makes my just a it squirrelly, not just because of the isolation, but because of the lack of signage to which I have become accustomed on more travelled routes. For example, my map notes, and a sign around Meziadin junction says, that Bell 2 exists and has gas: but between there and Bell 2, there isn’t anything else. You just keep going and hope you don’t sneeze at the wrong time, because the truth is that you blink and its past you already, since it is a few houses and a café and a gas station, pretty much. Run for forestry and mining companies, I’d guess. The café/station is run by a family, and daddy was teaching his 10-year old to handle the cash register, and I gotta tell you, something about her earnest professionalism and careful “yes sir” and “here is your change sir” reminded me of a other little girl aout the same age, who quite expertly was hawking her family’s mustard at the Millarville farmer’s market a month or two back.
Well, I was making reasonably good time when things started to go sour. My fuel issues were now over, but the road began to see more and more construction. This meant slow downs, single lanes and directed traffic. Then, around km marker 430 from zero in Stewart, the road actually went to gravel for stretches of about twenty klicks or more. Mind you, the quality of the road was great: my wife’s matrix could make this, no problem. As evidence of the insouciance with which locals take this in stride, I present one guy who passed me going south at around 5:30pm in a bright red, mud-spattered BMW, without a care in the world, going about his business quite unconcernedly. But it slowed me down at a time when I was trying to go faster. And the thing is, hardtop or gravel, the solitude of the highway makes driving more dangerous, not less (in my humble opinion) because when you drive as if no-one else is on the road with you (I rarely checked the rearview mirror and often took the centre of the road on straight stretches), the sooner or later you'll meet someone going in the opposite direction who has exactly the same opinion. I tell you, it was nerve racking: I kept meeting cars coming at me, never on the straightaways where I could see them coming, ut 99% of the time around corners: all of which were blind. It got so bad that I always slowed myself down as I turned any corner, blind or not.
Anyway, after this I paid less attention to anything like photos or people, just drove, hard and fast, as fast as I safely could bearing the above in mind. I still had over 300km to go and although I knew I was in the north and daylight would last longer, I also knew my wife would be worrying if I did not check in. Essentially, I drove for the next four hours without a break, admiring – even envying – the lakes and scenery I kept passing, wishing I could stop at one and just camp over, but pushing on nevertheless.
I hit the Yukon Territory somewhere around 830pm, and sunlight was still in the sky. This was a photo op I could not miss, but I simply did not have the time to put myself in it, so I just made sure the Pathfinder was in the photo and shot that (I mean, people might dispute whether I'm actually here, but everyone knows my car and my hat, so that should silence the snooty critics who might believe I am lounging around in a tropical hotel with the proverbial blonde). A few miles up was Nugget City, and Watson Lake ten klicks down the road: ahhh, the Alaska Highway was such a blessed relief after the bumping and shaking of the gravel roads I just got off of. Maybe in a few years they will have paved the whole thing and it’ll be a better drive, who knows? But by then I'll have the family along and it won't be such a frenetic drive.
As I mentioned, I had not checked in anywhere, and the one place I did want to stay – The Big Horn Motel (“Jaccuzzi!””Satellite TV!””Wireless Internet!””Double beds!”) – had no vacancies. So I just walked next door and booked myself into the hotel there. Which was not top of the line by any means – thin walls, no carpet, no internet, no direct dial – but all I wanted was to call home and get some sleep. I had been on the road for fifteen hours, and travelled 1,340km. I was definitely owed sack time.
Which I did. Kym was happy to hear from me and reassured that I had made it, we gossiped, I told her about the trip, and we closed off. I hit the sack ten minutes later, and wrote this one the next day.
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