We Made It

This is a father’s day I will never forget.  We made it to Alaska today.  We were both so excited to see that welcome sign as we crossed the international border.  A young man from Saul Palo Brazil was standing in front of the sign taking photos of himself.  He said it had taken him 50 days to drive on his motorcycle to Alaska.  He was very excited.

Cape Coral to Alaska in 27 Days

Saul Palo Brazil to Alaska in 50 Days

We took photos of each other by the sign and the international border.  You can’t appreciate our jubilation because you didn’t ride the last 100 miles of the highway in the Yukon.  It took us four hours from Haines Junction.  We couldn’t drive much over 25 to 30 MPH much of the way.  There were huge frost heaves, holes and other hazards I don’t know how to describe.  You can’t count on the little markers that are posted to point out frost heaves.  The biggest ones often had no marking at all.  I learned to spot them by watching the lines on the highway.  If they got wavy up ahead that meant there were heaves up ahead.

Notice the frost heave just ahead.  If you are going 50 mph here you are going to break something.

Some of the road was completely torn up, pavement and all.  Miles of it, in fact.  We came across a couple from Arcadia, Fl. stopped along the road just north of Beaver Creek.  They had just entered the hazardous zone from Alaska.  They didn’t drive this road coming up.  I think they took the ferry.  They hit a huge frost heave and broke the tow bar on their pickup truck and the tailgate dropped causing them to almost lose the motorcycle sitting in the back of the truck.  Their eyes were as large as saucers.  They were very shaken by what had just happened to them.  They almost lost the truck and the motorcycle.  He said the tow bar was holding by a thread when they stopped.  His wife was going to drive the truck to the nearest town in hopes of fixing the tow bar.

He asked me how much farther this type of driving went to the south.  I said 100 miles.  He looked at me in disbelief.  They had just entered the bad area and thought this must be the worst of it.  We thought it was pretty easy going at this point but didn’t tell them that.  We didn’t want them to collapse right there.

The road is bad but the view is beautiful.

We saw people driving way faster than they should the entire way.  We also saw the tow truck picking up one motor home and the guy that does welding in another place.   The road can fool you.  It looks good in many places.  The frost heaves are not really apparent unless you are looking for them.  The lady from Arcadia said she hit her head on the ceiling when they hit the heave that did them in.  We passed it a short distance later and I have no doubt it nearly catapulted her through the roof.  We had been driving slowly and we were bouncing around like the ladies in the cancan line at the Frantic Follies in Whitehorse.

We heard the story of another guy with a brand new motor home who hit a frost heave way too fast and ripped the cabinets right off the wall.  You can do some real damage on this section if you aren’t careful.

But let me say this.  The entire highway through Canada was in better shape than any of the interstates in the U.S..  They are very well maintained.  Except for the last one hundred miles the Alaska Highway is a pussy cat.  The reason the last bit is so bad is due to the type of terrain it traverses.  It is made up of gravel and glacial deposits that hold large quantities of water.  It freezes and thaws and that isn’t good for the road up on top.  Engineers and scientist have been trying to come up with a paving method that would hold up for many years but to date nothing they have tried has worked.  We saw one area that looked like another experiment.  They had dozen of pipes sticking up out of the ground like stacks possibly to ventilate the ground under the highway.  If it worked, it would be a very costly remedy.  It would take millions of these things to line the whole 100 miles.

I can’t tell you the excitement to see our first 35 MPH speed limit sign.  After 6 days of reading everything in kilometers seeing that first sign of America was sweet.  Our next joy came at the first gas stop.  It was just $4.50 per gallon for cash.  That is more than a dollar a gallon less than what we had been paying.  

There is one long stretch from Ft. Nelson to Watson Lake where there are only little outpost gas stations.  We only hold 40 gallons so I set my driving limit at 200 miles to have a safety margin.  We can go between 280 and 320 miles depending on our fuel mileage at any given time.  The distance between these two places is right at my limit.  That meant I had to fuel up at an outpost in between to be safe.  It is a long walk through empty land with bears everywhere.  I wouldn’t want to be running out of gas.

I had to pay $192.9 for a liter of gas at the outpost.  That figures to be $7.33 Canadian per US gallon.  That doesn’t include the exchange rate which would make it more like $8.00 per gallon.  Most places we paid $5.50 to $.6.00 per gallon.  Americans whine about $3.85.  

Everything in Canada is expensive compared to the US.  We think it is bad at home because we don’t know what others are paying for the same goods and services.  Even taking away the disparity dollar, the cost in Canadian is high.  Our friend from Saul Palo agreed.  Canada was the most expensive place he traveled through.

I picked up a few, "I drove the Alaska Highway and Survived",  bumper stickers today.  I earned them believe me.  That last 80 miles was terrible.  Many people bust hitches, springs, axles and all kinds of things on that stretch.  Years ago the whole highway used to be that bad.   We are in for repairs ourselves.  We will probably be a couple of days at least.  They have to fly parts in to this area.  We are talking remote.

We met some nice folks along the way and we are still having fun.  This photo is an example of Alaskan lawn ornaments.  The sign reads, "Alaska Beautification".   Most people seem to have a large collection of junk vehicles to decorate their lawns.