Alaskan Roadtrip! Day 5 June 27th, 2012

After a wonderful (free) shower to start off our morning, we paid for the previous nights stay the hit the road. We had a wonderfully scenic day ahead of us as we would be crossing back through the northern Canadian Rockies on our way west.

The highway first took us north towards Fort Nelson, crossing the Muskwa River, the lowest point on the Alaska Highway at 1000 feet. There we gassed up, got more ice and continued west, first along the Muskwa River before climbing around Steamboat Mountain. The highway then drops down and follows the Tetsa River as it climbs to it’s head at Summit Lake, in Stone Mountain Provincial Park. This is at Summit pass, the highest point on the Alaska Highway at 4250 feet.

We’d been warned we might see stone sheep on the highway in this area and sure enough we passed a male, then a few curves later, a female and lamb, all just hanging out on the road. Just a few miles further, we pulled over along with several other travelers to watch a moose cow drinking from the river below us.

Then we started seeing bears. First one crossed the road in front of the car in front of us, then we started seeing them munching on the grass on the shoulder. By the end of the day we’d seen 13 black bears, plus a mama grizzly and her two cubs just before we crossed into the Yukon Territory. We also saw easily 40 bison in the Liard hot springs area, mostly hanging out on the shoulder.

The scenery along the Rockies was absolutely spectacular, huge mountains, blue rivers and wildlife galore! By the end of the day, I was wondering if Alaska would be able to impress us after this spectacular highway through the Rockies.

One final stop for the day, was the Watson Lake Sign Forest, in Watson Lake, YT. Started by Carl Lindley in 1942 during construction of the Alaska Highway, visitors have been adding signs ever since. It is said that are more than 70,000 signs here today. We brought along a sign that was signed by members of NAXJA at Northwest Fest the previous weekend.

Our campsite our last night in Canada ended up being Big Creek, east of Teslin. Our favorite thing about this campground was that it had absolutely free firewood, pre-cut into rounds for the campers. We may eve stop there again on our way back, just because of the free firewood.