Bear in Mind

We had decided when planning this trip to take the less traveled road going up and coming back via the famed Alaskan Highway. The opposite of what most folks do. We are planning on heading east to Minnesota after Alaska and it made more sense doing it this way. The road less traveled is the Cassiar Highway.

It is a beautiful drive. We saw at least ten bears along the roadside. However, it is slower since there are frequent areas where the road is being repaired along the way and stretches of gravel. Little did we know at the time, it was just a warm up for some of the roads to come later. We spent the night at the very scenic Mountain Shadows RV Park. It is good stopping point about half way to the junction with the Alaskan Highway. There was a moose sighting as well but I was too late to catch it.

Next day we continued up the road. The closer we got to the Alaskan Highway junction the more evidence of a recent fire late last year could be seen. We also noticed tents with signs for mushroom buyers. I asked about this later at the gas station at the junction. They were buying morel mushrooms from the locals picking them and the women showed me some that she picked. She did warn that there was also a mushroom that looked very similar called false morel that can kill you. Ugh, I think I’ll pass.

We finally made it to Yukon and the Alaskan highway! Now what? It was decision time. What exactly do we want to do first? I’ll take this opportunity to mention the “Milepost” . This travel guide book became more and more valuable the closer we got to Alaska.

It pretty much gives a play by play of the road conditions, gas stations, scenic loops and stops along the way etc. Most of the places it mentions for restaurants and RV parks were good recommendations ( so far) with one blaring exception. That exception was the Rancheria Lodge and RV park. It sounded historic by its description having been in the guide from its first publication in 1949. But it was apparent that it no longer had owners that took any sort of pride in up keeping the place. And it had the biggest ravens I have ever seen in my life! They were hanging around some coffee cans on picnic benches in front of the restaurant. I was thinking maybe they were feeding them so I looked in the cans. Nope, just cigarette butts. Hmm, never knew ravens smoked maybe they were the cause of all those forest fires we saw? So skip this place. We stopped down the road the next day for breakfast at Dawson Peaks Resort and RV. It would have been a much better choice by far. Spoke with owner\ cook and she gave us some suggestions for the route to take next. So we took her advice decided to do the inland route first and headed up towards the historic Dawson City. I feel gold fever coming on!