Watson Lake – our start on the Alaska Highway

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 – Day 12

We pulled out of Dease Lake, BC this morning just after 10:00.  We drove through the Cassiar Mountains on Hwy 37 North also called the Stewart Cassiar Highway.  Spectacular scenery along the route but we didn’t get to enjoy it that much as the road from here to the Yukon border is very badly frost-heaved, with several gravel sections.  We were only able to maintain an average speed of about 50 Km./ hour.  Most of the time it was much slower; as we watched and tried to avoid the worst sections.  Try as we might there was plenty of load shifting in the trailer so we spent a couple of hours rearranging our stuff.  Some of these issues are no doubt caused by logging and mining trucks on the road – but if it wasn’t for them we probably would not be touring this part of the country.  Catch 22

We passed into the Yukon Territory around 3:00 PM and found a campsite at the Downtown RV Park in downtown Watson Lake.  As the name suggests it is downtown but Watson Lake isn’t that large.  A few stores , gas stations and car/RV repair shops stretched along the Alaska Hwy for a few blocks.  The one thing we wanted to see was the Northern Lights Centre, which is dedicated to the study of the Northern Lights but it does not open till later in the season.  Hopefully we will be able to catch their presentation on the return trip.

We were able to go to the Visitor Centre which offers a very good presentation of the building of the Alaska Highway.  Like so many other things including the Internet – the Alaska Highway was built out of military necessity.  There was no secure land based method of supplying Alaska with military armaments and other supplies. In eight months in 1942 the Alaska Highway was cut through the Canadian wilderness.  One of the lonely soldiers who was working on that project put up a sign in Watson Lake with the name of his home town on it.  That was the start of Watson Lake’s most famous tourist attraction.  The Sign Post Forest has evolved over the years with over 65,000 signs at last count, from all over the world.  More are added each year as tourists add a sign or a licence plate from their home town to the collection.

A sure sign that we are definitely far north is that the sun didn’t set till almost 10:00 PM tonight. The other sure sign that we are way up north is the cold; it was 7C when we arrived this afternoon, and we had some snow flurries this evening.  Watson Lake resembles a skating rink.