2005/07 Alaska Trip - North to Alaska - Watson Lake |
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Friday July 15th
We had drizzle next morning and a hundred miles of muddy gravel just added to the crud on the trailer.
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Cassiar Highway (Morchuea Lake, Jade City, Watson Lake) |
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We stopped at Dease Lake, the only real town on the Cassiar, to get our spare tyre casing put onto the spare wheel. We have spare wheels for both truck and trailer, but we were also carrying spare tyre casings for both on the roof of the truck. There are lots of places in the Yukon and Alaska that can puts tyres on for you, but the problem is finding a place that has the right sizes of tyre. Dease Lake proved to be typical. The little gas station had a tyre machine, but no tyres. So now we had a spare wheel again.
Our next stop was at Jade City, which is not a city by any standard, but more a place that has a jade shop on 
either side of the highway. John and Edna were buying jade carvings and Sandie was buying chunks of jade for some future project. This area has the mother lode for the jade that ends up in many of BC’s rivers, but the mines are closely guarded.
The Cassiar was drier as we went further north, but very bumpy, with some dangerous ripples. These can throw a car off the road, or cause a trailer to “porpoise” and break its hitch. We were relieved to get to the end of the Cassiar unscathed, enter the Yukon, and join the Alaska Highway. We were joining it at mile 600, measured from the highway’s starting point in Dawson Creek, with just 800 miles to go to its other end at Delta Junction.
We camped at the Yukon government campground on Watson Lake. This had fewer occupants and more bugs than last year, but John and I cooked a salmon outside anyway, and spent the evening swatting bugs and listening to the loons.
Saturday July 16th
The town of Watson Lake depends on the Alaska Highway’s travelers for its income, so it’s a good place to buy 
stuff. We found a place that had a trailer tyre of the right size, and strapped that to the roof, so now we had a spare casing again. John and Edna were browsing the Signpost Forest which had grown a few hundred more signs since our last visit. As we hadn’t thought to bring a sign from Mulgrave or White Bear Lake, we couldn’t add to the tens of thousands already there.