Entries about no internet

This blog entry is to get us caught up, for the most part. For the past week we have been dry camping our way out of Alaska and down the Cassiar Highway, with a plan to get to Prince Rupert on August 18. We have had no internet or cell service through virtually all of this time. There is no cell service at all on the Cassiar Highway, and very limited internet.

We start on the morning of August 9, in Soldatna, Alaska. At 8:00am we were first in line at the GoodWrench Oil Change, to get our Honda Pilot some fresh oil. We'd refilled our propane tank the day before and shopped at Fred Meyer to restock our pantry for our plan to spend 3 mights dry camping on our way back into Canada. By 9:00am TaJ was hooked onto the Pilot and off we went.

We ended that day 530 kilometers down the road, at the Alaska State Park campground at the Matansuka Glacier. We'll eventually post pictures from this stop when we have unlimited internet time. The campground was virtually empty, 10 sites and only 3 filled by morning.

August 10 ThIs was our roughest day on the road yet, and, by that, we mean the state of the road itself. The Tok Cutoff was under repair or very slow due to frost heaves. The road is built on permafrost and regularly falls apart. Slow going much of the time. We took a break for lunch in Tok, gassed up and headed on, with the plan to spend the night at Deadman Lake State Recreation site, just 50 kilometers short of the Canadian Border. As luck would have it, there was major road construction going on and Deadman Lake was inaccessible as a road work crew was blocking the entrance., We pushed on through the border and spent that night in Beaver Creek. Another 565 k under our belt, making our total 1095 k in 2 days.

August 11 Well, if yesterday was bad, today was worse. From Beaver Creek the road was a mess, with broken pavement, frost heaves and construction. We meandered along averaging 50 kilometers an hour, with the bad road and construction delays. We came upon a 25 kilometer stretch that was being re-gravelled, and were stopped for a 25 minute delay. We trailed behind a "follow-me" pilot truck through the zone, at 25 kilometers an hour. Right in front of the pilot truck was a tanker truck watering down the dusty gravel. By the time we got through to the good road again, TaJ was covered in mud. We ended the day early, at Congdon Creek Territorial Campground. This is a lovely spot that we camped at in 2005 and we were just glad to be off the road. We met fellow R-podders Jim and Chris, from Arizona. They have a 177 model and we compared notes on our trailer experience. We travelled 265 kilometers, bringing our 3 day total to 1360 k

August 12 A much better day on the road. We made good time right from the get-go and by noon we were in Whitehorse, where we re-supplied for our upcoming run down the Cassiar Highway. We spent $12 in a car wash getting the mud off both vehicles before getting back on the road. We ended the day at Teslin Lake Campground, right on the Alaska Highway, next to a rest area. By 7:00pm the entire 38 sites in the campground was full. At 9:00pm a semi pulled into the rest area and left his engine idling. At 10:30pm I walked up, knocked on his door and asked him politely to shut his engine off, so people could sleep. He apologized, and soon it was blessedly quiet. This day we travelled 480 kilometers, bringing our 4 day total to 1840 k.

August 13 We finished our Yukon experience at Noon, when we turned south onto the Cassiar Highway, the 750 kilometer long highway that connects to Highway 16 near Terrace. Our first stop was Jade City, the home of an intrepid family that mines jade in the local mountains. They have their own reality show, Jade Fever, now in its 4th season. Highly entertaining for a show in the reality genre. We bought some jade gifts for family members before heading south, We arrived mid afternoon at the Water's Edge Campground, a limited service campground just outside of Dease Lake. We booked in for 2 nights, as it is our plan to spend a day heading our Telegraph Creek Road, rated to be one of the great drives in Canada. We got to use our indoor and outdoor showers here, as this campground did not have showers, and boy, we needed one. I used the outdoor shower, and Jenny the indoor, Lovely to get clean again. We travelled 490 kilometers, bringing our 5 day total to 2330 k.

August 14 - The road to Telegraph Creek. This will be a blog entry of its own, when we have time to add photos to do justice to this magnificent drive. We;ll add our photos of Jade City on that one as well.

August 15 - We left Dease Lake at 8:30am, and ended the afternoon at Stewart BC. This was a good driving day. The Cassiar Highway is narrow and winding, with virtually no shoulder and steep drops into 5 to 10 foot deep ditches on either side. We made good time and arrived in Stewart by 3:00pm, where the first things on our agendas were showers, and laundry. We booked in here for three nights, as we need some time off the road. Our last day of this jaunt was 470 kilometers, making our 6 day total 2900 k. A really nice stretch of time without services.

After our stint in Stewart, we will be back in the world of internet access and will cover the high points of our last 7 days in the north./