The Big Drive: Seattle to Tok

View from Second Summit of Stawus Chief near Squamish

We are finally on our way to Alaska! And only have 2,000 plus miles to go, departing from the Seattle area. You might think that having cooked up this idea last summer, and having spent the last six months thinking and talking about it, that by now we would have a well-researched step-by-step travel plan. But if you think that then you are clearly a new reader of this blog (welcome!) and new friend of Dean and Dawn. Heck, we did not even know which day we planned to start our journey since Dean had a bit of online work for the War College to complete. To be fair, Dean, the ‘big idea’ guy, came up with the strategic plan, “wouldn’t it be awesome to spend the summer in Alaska and take our time about getting there?” And ever the master of details (sarcasm intended), Dawn, the engineer, then kinda sorta planned for us to drive the Sea to Sky route but yeah, basically all we did was circle a couple places on our map and said “that looks cool, we should go there.” That’s about what you get when you put a couple of type B personalities together. In his dieting advice Arnold (Former Cali Governor) used to say (in his thick Austrian accent), “you have to be a little bit hungry all de time.” Similarly, when it comes to YOFOAdventures, “You have to be a little bit flexible (and a little bit crazy) all de time.“

British Columbia does not lack mountains or lakes

And so it was that on 4 May we finally showed our passports at the Peace Arch border crossing into Canada (got any guns eh? No? Really? I thought all Americans carried guns. No? Alrighty then, enjoy your trip to Alaska eh!). Our first stop after crossing the border was a provincial park north of Vancouver and just south of Squamish. Unfortunately it was completely booked, so we adjusted and found a great little campground with small sites, but huge views of Shannon Falls plunging 1100 feet (wow!) down the mountainside. Legend has it that a two-headed serpent would rise up from the sound and go hunting in the mountains, slithering up the hillside, thus carving the path for the waterfall. The campground host told us that she likes to hike up to the top of Stawamus Chief, the second largest granite monolith in the world, and mentioned something about reaching first summit only taking about an hour. Dean did some checking in his All Trails app and somehow decided that Second Summit (a tad higher and a tad longer in his words) was the place to go for the best views. With about 2000 feet of climbing in under 2 miles to the peak, this was one steep hike, and it took well over an hour! But the views were spectacular and we didn’t even mind sharing the path with what seemed to be all the 20-somethings in the Vancouver area! The weather was gorgeous and warmer than typical, so we were happy that folks were out enjoying the woods and granite, even if we did exceed the average age by at least two decades. Yikes.

The view from Stawamus Chief’s Second Summit was amazing

Most of the trail up Stawamus was like this!

The Sea to Sky Highway did not disappoint. Whistler is a postcard view around every corner and looks to be a great place to play. We found a scenic day use park that let us stop for our picnic lunch with lake and mountain views and a plunging waterfall in a basalt formation. The hairpin switchbacks and 12+% grades were “fun” and the YOFOtruck continues to be a beast, even if we did watch our fuel economy briefly drop to single digits. We even saw a cute bear cub on the side of the road. Yay!

Everywhere we stop folks seem to tell us, “oh, you’re a bit early, eh?” Turns out we are a couple of weeks or so ahead of most Alaska bound travelers, so lots of places aren’t fully up and running yet. For example, we planned to stop in Clinton since the campground there boasted a BBQ buffet with “the best ribs in America,” (yup, Canada is in America). We frequently plan our stops based on the prospect of fabulous food (no judging). Alas, we discovered that their nightly Bbq didn’t start until five days after we arrived. Sigh.

We continued our pleasant drive north the next day, stopping at a very nice visitor center and town museum in Quesnel, home of the World’s Largest Gold Pan (no, we didn’t stop). The helpful gals there told us we should head toward Burns Lake for some mountain biking. Since that was too far for a one day drive, we decided to stop at a campground en route that also sold honey...yep! Told you our tummies and taste buds factor heavily in our decision making! We can now attest that the Bee Lazee Campground honey tastes as magical as you’d expect from happy Canadian bees working their magic.

He’s only allowed to share pics where I’m not arse over tea kettle

We made it to Burns Lake mid afternoon and found their municipal campground. It was right on the lake, and we were the only non-lunchtime occupants! We got some of the local intel from the visitors center - seriously, we’re not sure how it’s possible for every one of them to be so pleasant and helpful/knowledgeable. We did a fun but challenging trail run around a smaller lake (one of us *might* not have been completely forthcoming about the elevation profile…). Our reward was a trip to the local bakery for some tasty cinnamon buns and Apple Strudel. The next day we found their mountain biking network at the Boer Mountain Area and tried our pedaling acumen on some of their beginner and intermediate trails. As is normally the case, our fitness far exceeded our technical abilities. Also, when we crash, turns out we don’t bounce quite as well anymore. But the the trails were super fun and rated very appropriately, which we enjoyed. We grabbed lunch at the Woodland Bakery (yes, we went back) and then hit the road. While mountain biking we happened to run into a Canadian couple who mentioned another mountain biking trail network a couple hours further north in Smithers.

This is the trail that led up, up, up to the 2d photo (Mountains And Lakes caption)

Arriving in Smithers, we had a moment of “uh-oh” when we found out that their municipal campground hadn’t yet opened for the season. It’s never good when you turn into your intended destination and see “closed” slapped across the campground sign. Again, another helpful lady at the local visitor center (they’re everywhere!) knew of a place five minutes back on the edge of town. And she had hiking and biking maps for us! We got sorted and headed out for a hike on the bluff overlooking town that provided views to the mountains to the north. It was a gorgeous hike and we guessed correctly on looping clockwise as the trail basically had super steep sections that were challenging enough to go up, but that neither of us were excited about the thought of going down.

Remember our comment about fitness versus skills on the mountain bikes? Yeah, that was in full display at the Hudson Bay Mountain Area in Smithers. The general concept was ride uphill, suffering, and then enjoy the gravity fueled descent. And by enjoy, one of us means “why can’t I steer left to right and holy hades am I walking my bike a lot.” And the other was thinking “quit being a wuss, but thanks for giving me an excuse to go slow.” Still - GREAT day in the woods and playing on bikes. Also, Smithers has at least two bakeries (yep) and both of them have tasty offerings for sale. There’s also a sausage factory/market. We honestly planned this stop for the mountain biking but there’s no harm in sampling good eats, is there?

From Smithers, our route took us a little bit west to head a lot more north. We made the northward turn at Kitwanga to join the Cassiar Highway and detoured to see a collection of totem poles. The skill and artistry in representing animals from eagles to frogs to dogs on towering posts was impressive. We temporarily bypassed one must-see Provincial Park (still closed for winter) in order to head down to the co-towns of Stewart (in BC) and Hyder (in AK). The Bear Glacier Area was the perfect spot to stop en route and enjoy our ubiquitous “pb&j with a view.” We knew we were early (the town fills up in Aug-Sep when the bears are feeding on spawning salmon), but it seemed like we were the only non-residents in town. The town’s campground was lovely and we really enjoyed talking to the family who are running it. We briefly entered Alaska (!) to check out Hyder and the Fish Creek Area and drive partway (still snow blocking sections) up toward the Salmon Glacier. We missed out on our chance to eat local pizza because there was a power outage and the technicians are dispatched from a town over three hours away.

Our first visit to Alaska!  What you see is about what you get. The US side did not even bother with a border control point. — Our first visit to Alaska! What you see is about what you get. The US side did not even bother with a border control point.

We were traveling the Cassiar Highway right as many of the provincial parks were starting up for the season and got into Meziadin Lake PP on opening day. It was simply gorgeous and our two kayak adventures started from our campsite. We have been seeing lots of bears, a few moose, caribou and other critters from the highways and this area seemed to have lots of the fuzzy furry hungry beasts.

Outflow from Salmon Glacier. The turquoise “puddle” is called a kettle and was created by a melting stranded chunk of glacier.

Continuing north, we also enjoyed Kinaskan Lake PP and Boya Lake PP. Boya Lake has fun interpretative trails and we enjoyed paddling around the lake, even though we got caught in a spring squall with 45 degree cold rain and driving winds! The water in Boya Lake is crystal clear and you can see all the way to the marl bottom in many places.

The next day had us entering the Yukon Territory! We were excited about re-provisioning at Watson Lake and were pleasantly surprised at how cool the Signpost Forest was. We are not particularly good at being tourists, but that is a tourist attraction not to be missed! The visitor center staff was (again) absurdly helpful and hooked us up with all sorts of info - including multiple booklets on Yukon wildlife and flowers. We learned a new word - lagomorph - and then promptly went out in search of a snowshoe hare (we saw some!).

The Yukon’s provincial parks were also just opening up and we enjoyed both of the ones we had a chance to stay at. Squanga Lake PP gave us a bit of a mechanical scare. Our powered front landing legs stopped working - yikes! (These are the ones that let us disconnect from the truck by supporting the front of the trailer, and that level us out front to back. The hand crank still seemed to work, so we figured we’d get a good night sleep and hope for the best. The next day proved that hope is not a method as the motor was still inop, but we got on the road after a bunch of gravity assisted hand-cranking with the hope that replacing an inline fuse would do the trick. We bought a fuse in Whitehorse, and voila, we were back in the power-legs land of mead and honey.

Our last night in Canada (till we return to the lower 48) saw us camping in Congdon Creek PP right on the shores of Kluane Lake. Gorgeous place to camp although the lake is huge and windy enough, and there was enough ice still on it that putting the kayaks in was not something we wanted to do. Instead, we hiked up Sheep Creek Trail in Kluane Natl Park and got a chance to enjoy nature and see a bunch of Dall Sheep. Kluane Natl Park protects the largest quantity of non-polar icefields on the continent and is crazy big and rugged. It also shares borders with the US and Wrangell St Elias NP and some other protected areas. We hope to spend some more time in this park on our return journey.

Windblown ice makes a crazy cool noise which you can’t hear in this pic of Kluane Lake

Some stats, since the next blog post will have us arriving into the Alaska. It took us about 2300 miles after leaving Seattle to get to our first Alaska stop near Tok. We stayed 14 nights at places ranging from free to $40 (total about $260). We used about 225 gallons of diesel and about 5 gallons of DEF (about $975 worth...gas is not cheap in Canada). We human powered ourselves thru over 56 miles of hike, bike, run, paddle.

That’s a lot of green line for two weeks.

We thought it would take us longer to get thru the western portion of Canada, but we also don’t feel like we rushed it. We played where we could and stopped frequently. Most importantly, we’re still laughing, smiling and finding adventures big and small. And now that we’ve arrived in Alaska we can already see that we our summer here should be amazing.

Kluane NP getting us excited for more hiking