After long days of driving in Alberta, we reached Dawson Creek, BC. Dawson Creek is where the famous Alaska-Canadian Highway begins. It’s an iconic milestone for all the travellers doing PanAmerican.
The Alaska-Canadian Highway, also known as the Alaska Highway, was an ambitious engineering project constructed during World War II. It has been described as the largest and most difficult construction project since the Panama Canal.
The highway begins at Dawson Creek in British Columbia, where this sign and a small cairn mark the start of the road. From there, the 1,400-mile-long highway snakes northwest through Canada to Alaska. The majority of the roadway is actually in Canada. It will ends in Fairbanks, Alaska.
From here, there is few hundreds of kilometers to go through northern British Columbia to reach the next big city called Fort Nelson, before reaching the border of the Yukon state.
The drives are long but there are less traffic on the roads and the sceneries are stunning.
We were planning for short hikes along the way to stretch our legs after a long day of driving.
Days were getting noticeably longer and we had a lot of daylight to enjoy our stunning camps after a long day on the road.
So I can say that the days were interesting. A lot of untouched natural beauty, Crystal clear lakes without the crowds in Banff and Jasper and a lot of hidden hiking trails and waterfalls that most of the time, they don’t have a sign on the main road and you can find them at the end of the dirt trail if you know there are there.
The other interesting part of this drive was the amount of wildlife we saw on side of the road. Mountain goats, Elks, Buffalos and of course bears. Especially earlier in the morning, grazing on the grass on both sides of the road.
And after few days of driving, we reached Watson Lakes with its famous Sign post forest and our first stop in the mighty state of Yukon. From here, we had to choose our route. Our plan was going north after reaching Watson Lakes through the Robert Campbell highway, also called highway 4, deep through Yukon, reach Ross River and then carry on to Dawson City. Do the famous Dempster highway and reach Arctic ocean before heading south and entering Alaska from top of the World highway.
It was much more fun and remote, deep into Yukon and Northwest territories. So that’s what we’ve done. Just as we entered Yukon, we got as much grocery as we could in Watson Lakes, visited Sign post forest, washed the car in an interesting car wash, did our laundry, did some major oil changes on chaapaar and headed north to Robert Campbell Highway.
Yukon Highway 4, also known as the Robert Campbell Highway or Campbell Highway, is a road between Watson Lake, Yukon on the Alaska Highway to Carmacks, Yukon on the Klondike Highway. It is 583 km (362 mi) long and mostly gravel-surfaced. It serves the communities of Faro and Ross River and intersects the Canol Road near Ross River.
We took this so called highway, which was a long dirt road with almost no traffic but lots of stunning lakes and wildlife. A great way to explore the real Yukon. Our first stop was a crystal clear lake for a swim where we had a Moose mom with her twins enjoying their afternoon in the lake. It was such a wild experience and there, we realized that we made a good choice to take the off the beaten road in Yukon.
At least that was what we thought then. It changed pretty soon though. In the next post we’ll explain what happened as we went deeper into Yukon and how it affected our plans. Till then enjoy life.
