The sun was up and pouring through my window at 4:30 AM, so I arose early and rolled out of Fort Nelson at 6:00. The plan was to drive at least as far as Watson Lake, 319 miles and about 7 hours away, but clear over on the other side of the northernmost section of the Rockies. According to all my guide books, that was the usual goal for Day 2 of the drive, but I figured I’d play it by ear. I had the most current version of The Milepost, a mile-by-mile guide to everything there is to know about the Alaska Highway, so I was confident in my ability to deviate from the “usual” whenever that made good sense.

At one point I passed a rest stop and spotted the rig from Arizona with the old prospector I’d met the day before, so I pulled over and greeted him a good morning before driving off. Spotted a couple of moose along the road and took pictures, then drove on to Muncho Lake, a particularly beautiful body of water with gorgeous greenish turquoise color in the shallows due to high mineral content. 

Several views of Muncho Lake, in the Rocky Mountains of northern British Columbia

I took numerous photos, and then drove on. Spotted several wild bison along the road, and took more photos! This truly was an extraordinary stretch of road, and my Al-Can adventure was starting to get seriously real for me.

There was a construction delay, with one-way traffic waiting for escort by a pilot vehicle, so I shut off the Jeep and played a game on my phone to pass the time. Somebody honked, and I realized that traffic had started moving, so I quickly restarted my engine. I’m not sure what I did that was different, but an electrical problem I’d had in Yosemite was suddenly back again. My engine was running, but all my accessories were dead, so I had no radio, no AC, I couldn’t roll down the windows, and the windshield wipers didn’t work! It wasn’t nearly as hot as it had been in Yosemite, so it wasn’t as instantly miserable—but I was still panicked, for fear it wouldn’t self-resolve this time. The Alaska Highway without windshield wipers would be a disaster just waiting to happen.

Liard River Hot Springs Provincial Park, northern British Columbia

I was running low on gas so I stopped at Contact Creek—billed as the cheapest gas on the Alaska Highway. Fuel is expensive in Canada, mostly because the taxes assessed at the pump are significantly higher than in the U.S. In remote areas, you have to add in the cost of transportation, and that bumps the price per liter into the stratosphere (as much as double what it costs in the U.S.). I talked to the owner of the isolated gas station, who told me about the terrible fires still burning only 8 miles away. Scary stuff!

I pulled into Watson Lake at about 1:30, just as it started raining. This was nominally my goal for the day—I’d done 300 miles and I had in fact been driving 7 hours, including the stop at the hot springs, the construction delays, and the stops for photos. There on the town’s main drag, there were a couple of motels that looked a bit worn around the edges, and a couple of restaurants. The one campground was already packed cheek by jowl with RV’s.

I checked out the famous sign post forest, which was started by a homesick G.I. who was part of the original road crew building the first version of the Alaska Highway during WWII. While erecting road signs for the new highway, he added a sign of his own that stated the mileage to his home town in Illinois. Others did the same, and it turned into a tradition that grew—and grew—until there were tens of thousands of road signs from all over the world, creating one of the most well-known roadside attractions on the Alaska Highway.

Signpost Forest, Watson Lake, Yukon

I stopped at the market, and bought some fried chicken in their little deli. My guide book told me that Whitehorse, my next recommended overnight stop, was another eight hours of driving. I asked the old guy at the counter, and he said it could be done in four hours in good weather—but that I should watch my speed at milepost 770 (or something like that), because there was a Mountie on patrol there who loved to write tickets. Since it was still pretty early, and since Watson Lake wasn’t exactly singing to me (no offense), I took a good hard look at my map. Four hours to Whitehorse was hopelessly unrealistic, but five? Maybe, and five was a lot less than eight. The rain had already stopped, and the sky was clearing. If the good weather held, I could do another five hours, and if I got too tired, I could always pull over and sleep in the Jeep. I studied the map one more time, and said “What the hell!” (Or words to that effect,) I topped up the gas tank, and drove on, into the Yukon!

Second and Third Legs of the Alaska Highway: Fort Nelson to Watson Lake, and on to Whitehorse, 591 miles, about 12 hrs

The next three hundred miles, which I fairly flew through in a bit more than 5 hours—was one of the most spectacular stretches of road I’ve ever driven (and that’s saying a LOT)! Incredible mountains with a dozen shades of green, rushing rivers, beautiful lakes, and purple wildflowers called fireweed lining the road like cosmic landscaping, mile after mile. The big Yukon sky held some of the most amazing clouds I’ve ever seen.

Every time I rounded a curve in the road there was another stupendous vista; it was nothing short of astonishing! I was literally yipping out loud, and a couple of times I actually pulled over and stopped while I pounded on my chest to “re-start” my heart! Made it to Whitehorse, the largest town in the Yukon, by 6:30 or so, and decided to splurge on a Day’s Inn. That’s considered a budget motel chain in the U.S., but in Canada, they’re a bit more upscale, and that turned out to be the nicest paid lodging I’d stayed in up to that point in the trip. The room set me back $159 Canadian for the night—which worked out to about $125 U.S. The hotel had real internet, so I was able to catch up on correspondence. It was great to relax after such an amazing day of driving. The room had a good set of blackout curtains, so I was able to crash at 10:00 and got a good night’s sleep. (Outside my blacked-out window, the sun didn’t go down until 11:30!) This was truly a wonderful, wonderful day—all my expectations for the Alaska Highway were not simply met, they were exceeded, in a spectacular fashion! “Awesome” is a word that gets badly overused, but in this case, it was entirely appropriate.

Between the extremely short periods of darkness and the rain that was predicted for the coming week, I realized I’d be staying in motels more often than not. That meant the trip was going to end up costing me a lot more than my original estimates, but at this point? I had no regrets whatsoever!

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Some of the text and many of the photos in my Alaska Highway series first appeared on RoadTrip America’s website. A few years ago, I posted a detailed account of my entire 57 day, 13,000 mile “Mother of All Road Trips,” and RTA has kept that account available in their archive of Field Reports. If you’d like to read it, the link below will take you there:

MORE ABOUT THE ALASKA HIGHWAY:

A few years ago I wrote a book about road trips in Arizona and New Mexico that’s a lot like this website, packed with interesting information, and illustrated with beautiful photographs. Check it out! You can find it on Amazon, and at all other major booksellers.