Making our way south – yet again…

As I think I’ve said many times before, it takes a LONG time to get out of the North! Two full days of driving gets you to mile zero of the Alaska Highway in Northern BC, also known as the town of Dawson Creek, what is considered “northern” by most people…

Our first pause to stretch was the Watson Lake Sign Forest in the southern Yukon along the Alaska Highway. We usually hit this every time we come north or south as it’s a great place to take a break and about 5 hours from Whitehorse. One of these days we will actually put up our own sign. Kids have a great time checking out the old machines and old and young can enjoy the wide variety of signs throughout the forest (over 72,000 of them!).

We managed to see lots of wildlife over the two days (bears, moose, elk, foxes etc.) but the Bison herd was definitely the biggest hit, with Hunter leaning out the window trying to get pictures while telling Tim to slow down. Stopping is a moment by moment decision based on which way the big males are facing and gauging their mood… The majority of them cluster north and south of Liard Hotsprings – another must stop destination on the drive north or south!

This year we drove the extra distance to reach Mile Zero of the Alaska Highway at Hunter’s request. He did most of our trip planning for the first two weeks as part of his last school assignment and found key things he wanted to experience while also calculating mileage, fuel costs and travel distance each day.

Night two found us parked in an empty parking lot in downtown Chetwynd, home of a large annual international chainsaw carving competition. The best part is that all of the carvers work is displayed throughout town so it makes for a wonderful scenic walk through what would otherwise be a pretty standard northern forestry town along the highway.

Night three and we made it to Prince George – land of cell service, grocery stores and other amenities. A great place to stock up before we continued west to Burns Lake for five days of Mountain Biking.