After the excitement from yesterday, we were all pumped up to see the Alaskan highway today. We got on the road about 7:45am, even though the sun comes up about 4:30am and does not go down until about 11pm. The sun was shining and the sky was really blue, it was a perfect day to see the sights along the first few hundred miles of the Alaskan highway.
We pulled out of the RV park and follow the GPS instructions. It was telling us to go west and showed a couple of roads that would cut over to the highway. Dad was leading and he turned on the first road. He barely got off the main road and stopped. Soon we heard him on the walkie talkie – this was not a good idea and you guys check out the next road. It was gravel but looked a lot better than the first one. Dawson Creek had rain all day yesterday and who knows how much came down the days prior to our arrival. It seemed okay and we didn’t have far to go, so we decided to take our chances.
Mason Road was 3 miles long according to GPS. We didn’t get much over a mile and it kept getting worse and worse. The mud holes were easy to dodge initially, but they got deeper and wider with no turn off in sight. Once we got to the sign that said End of Maintained Public Road, we knew it wasn’t going to be good…. and we were right. We should have known when we passed the school bus and the driver looked at us funny.
We saw one house down a road and we were able to pull up onto that road, back up, and turn around. It took Darin several tries, but he got out okay with our 4 wheel drive truck. Next was dad and his heavier truck and fifth wheel. He was partially backed up and turned and got stuck.
First we tried to put rocks under the front of the tires, but that didn’t work. He couldn’t back up very far or the trailer wheels were likely to roll off the side of the road into the ditch and we would really have a problem. We piled gravel behind the rear wheels and put our tire chocks about 8 inches behind the trailer tires. He backed up about 8 inches and stopped on top of the gravel. Then we put gravel into the holes that his tires dug out. He put the truck in gear and gave it some gas and got going. This time he was not going to stop for about 15 feet until he was clear of the muddy spots. It only took us 45 minutes, but we got back to the highway and started the 1390 miles to Fairbanks.
The GPS will take you down any cow track that looks like a road. A hard map will give you a better idea what kind of road it might be.
We also had the hard map of the area, but apparently Canada does not distinguish gravel roads from paved. Or maybe we don’t know how to read them! Lol