Saturday, June 4, 2016 Travel to Destruction Bay, YT
Everyone has heard the horror stories about the road
conditions traveling to Alaska. Well here is the first hand info. As you know we
came up the Cassier Highway to the Alaskan Highway. The travel on the Cassier
was no worse than some of the secondary roads in the US. They were a little
narrow at times but not enough for you not to enjoy the ride. Once we got to
Watson Lake, YT and hit the Alaskan Highway we started to see the notorious
frost heaves. I expected to see areas were the road raised up 1 to 2 feet and
split open and hell spewed forth. That is not reality. The truth is the frost
heaves causes the road to become wavy sometimes and the distance between the
crest of the waves can cause a very interesting drive (like really bouncy). In
some places the road has been repaired but it is not level and you can have a
wobble effect in your drive. In the Yukon they mark 99% of these areas with RED
FLAGS and you have plenty of time to slow down. That is the trick SLOW down and
take the problem areas at 15 to 30 mph. There is not a lot of traffic so there
are no worries in slowing down that much. Now for the rest of the story. There
are areas where the road is gravel. Here you drive according to the road
conditions. I was driving 10 mph where the road was washboardy and 50 where the
gravel was well packed. It took us 7 hours to travel 270 miles.
Now back to the BLOG. After we left Skagway we saw a brown
bear feeding along the road before we re-entered Canada. We continued
to retrace our steps back to Whitehorse. After passing Whitehorse we were on new roads and we found
the conditions compared to the previous roads slightly worse but manageable. We
approached Lake Kluane near Destruction Bay and thought there was a fire near
by. But to find out it was sand blowing where the foot of Lowell Glacier was
receding and exposing it.
We arrived at Destruction Bay Lodge and RV Park which was a
parking lot with hookups. But the owner was worth the stop. Loren was a wealth
of information and proud of his spot there on the lake.
In some of our pictures you will see the sunset which was at
11:40pm and the sunrise at 4am. Strange to see this much sunlight all of the time. Thank goodness we have MCD blinds and dark curtains. Mike hasn't had to use the flashlight to take Max out.
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