Day 81 – May 30- Slow and Easy Down the Road

There was a country song that was played on the radio a few years ago, I don’t remember who sang it and I’m not sure of the title but there was a repeating line in the song of “Slow and easy down the road I go”.  That has been our unofficial theme for this trip.  Another song from maybe 20 years ago by Don Williams was titled “Lord I hope this day is good”.  After all the months of planning and research for this trip I have changed the title just a little for this next segment of our adventure.  The new title is “Lord I hope this trip is good”.

I am very nervous about this leg of the trip.  We (or maybe it is just me) expect to see many types of wild animals and heart stopping scenery – what if that doesn’t happen?  The trip will not be a failure, but it will be a major disappointment.

I have not slept well for the last two nights.  Again last night I was awake part of the night and it is now 6 a.m. and I have taken a shower and am ready for the day.  Thing is, I still have four hours before the rest of the crew will be ready for the day.

So I will write a little about the dogs.  They have been great on this trip.  They have been left in the camper sometimes for most of the day.  When we get home they really need lap time.  Chloe has been entertaining herself with hiding bones and toys.  Sadie has always had the need to hold something in her mouth when she sleeps – this started when she was a little 2-pound puppy and continues to this day.  Chloe likes to shake a toy when she plays, so she usually has a brown dog looking toy she plays with while Sadie likes to hold a bone or one of the other toys in her mouth.  Chloe will take the bones or Sadie’s favorite toy and hide it under the pad in one of the beds.  I’m not sure why she does it, maybe she wants Sadie to play with her, but Sadie is too lazy for that.  Sadie spends most of the driving time on the dash, stretched out in the sunshine if she can find any, or curled in a ball if not.  Chloe starts the day on Dorrie’s lap.  After about an hour Dorrie will put her down and she goes to one of the beds to sleep.

Chloe is has her head on the rope toy Sadie takes to bed.

We filled up the campers at a station where the cost was 1.389 per liter.  That works out to $5.26 per gallon – the highest so far and I expect it to just keep going up.  The good news is our miles per gallon is going up also, we almost hit 8 mpg on this fill up!

After that kick in the pants we drove to the visitor’s center parking lot.  We were told we could leave the campers there while we walked around or used the car.  We went to the new Alaska Highway Museum and watched a very good movie on the building of the road.  They had interviews with people who had been there – I found it very emotional and it really struck home the hardships they endured.  Some that I remember are a guy saying it was not unusual to find a tractor operator (Caterpillar) sitting beside his tractor crying because of the extreme cold.  They told of truck drivers being put on KP duty if they ran their truck off the road.  The drivers started doing it on purpose because the trucks didn’t have heaters and it was warm in the kitchens.  So they changed the rules so the driver had to get his truck back on the road first and then they MIGHT get KP.  Most of the heavy equipment operators knew nothing about running the equipment, so it was OJT.  They told about attempting to cross Charlie Lake with a D9 CAT on a barge (several boats tied together with a platform on top of the boats) when a storm blew up and they all went down, 5 where rescued and I think it was 9 that didn’t make it.  These were just young boys/men that got thrown into building the road.  When it was finished it was 1,500 miles long and built in less than nine months.

The Army built the “frontier road” and then civilian contractors followed to construct the permanent road – below is a copy of the sign that hung in the recruitment office for the civilian contractors.

After the museum I filled the LP gas tank up – we were down to half a tank and we use it to keep the refrigerator running while we drive.  After that we hit the road – it was about noon by then.  We turned off the current highway onto a short section of the original road to cross the only remaining wooden bridge – the Kiskatinaw Curved Bridge.  The road was much rougher and when we got to the bridge it was something to see.  Constructed by civilian contractors in 1942-43 it is made of all wood and crosses the river with a nine-degree curve along the 534-foot length.  The bridge is 100 feet above the river and was in use until 1978.  The museum had a small-scale model of how it was made.  The wood was first laid from side to side on the timbers and then the final road floor was laid long ways over the river.  I got out of the camper to take pictures while Dorrie drove across the bridge, which was something for her, since she has a hard time when we cross bridges and she is the passenger!

It started raining – with lighting flashing, just as we were going through Fort St. John.  It was now about 2 o’clock.  We started looking for a provincial park for the night.  We are currently in Charlie Lake Provincial Park – the same Charlie Lake that took down the barge during the construction of the road by the Army.

A lot of the campsites were reserved, so we drove on until Rick spotted a double site that was available.  He started to pull in, but cut the turn too short and the rear duals dropped into a ditch.  I thought he was going to turn over his camper it pitched up so much – we were down hill from them and we could see their whole roof!  He pulled out of the ditch, but then the front wheels on the car turned all the way to the turning stops and the wheel and tire started digging into the dirt bank.  I called him on the CB to stop.  When he stopped, the camper and car rolled back a little so the pressure was off the wheel.  He unhooked the car and then positioned his camper.  I backed in and we set up camp.

After about 30 minutes Rick walked out to look at the ruts he made and came back to ask if the ranger had taken the “available” sign off the post.  No one saw a ranger or anyone else stop.  He and I got in the car and found another double site on up the road.  So we moved the campers up to truly available sites and set up the campers again.