Alaska 2008

It was with some trepidation that we pulled out of the campground in Kitwanga. We had heard from a southbound traveler on the Cassiar Highway that it was in pretty bad condition. To top it off, it was raining, so the road conditions we should expect would be bad. This traveler and I have a very different concept of bad roads. The road for the first 100 or so was smooth blacktop... we have streets at home that are in worse conditions than we encountered. We then encountered a series of constructions sites with sections of one lane travel where we had to stop until the southbound traffic cleared the work zone. One of the construction areas was a stretch of 40 Km (25 miles) with intermittent work zones so we had to constantly watch for flag persons. As we pulled into one of these work zones, the flag person was holding a stop sign and gesturing in a manner that totally confused Susie and me. I had my four way flashers on was using the engine to slow me down and applying the brake and stopped about 25 feet from the flag person. She came over and started yelling at us for speeding in a work zone and that I don't value the life of the workers on the job. She kept going on this theme for a while and said it was a $2,500 fine for speeding in a work zone. She told us that the work zone speed limit in British Columbia is 20 Km per hour (about 12 MPH). I was starting to get annoyed over her ranting but decided to keep my mouth shut. I have spent too many years in the field of safety to take this BS about my not caring about working people. I also would have told her that there is no posted speed limit anywhere in any of the work zones we passed. The only warning is a sign that says, "SLOW." If in fact there is a 20 Km/H limit, then they should post it... slow is to vague a term. I was in second gear and I doubt that I was doing more than 20 MPH.

As we got past Tatogga Lake, road conditions worsened a bit, but they were still a lot better than we encountered in 2005. This past winter must have been pretty rough because there was a lot of frost heave damage on the road. Until they can get to fixing all the damage, the highway is marked with red warning signs identifying the damaged area. As a result we were constantly slowing down for the bumps and than accelerating to the speed limit. All in all, it was not the nightmare we expected. At the gas station in Dease Lake, I was told by a local that there is stretch of construction that we will encounter tomorrow that will slow us down and then it will be smooth sailing to the Alaska Highway. I hope this guy's concept of road conditions is closer to mine than the guy who described the road conditions yesterday.

The Cassiar Highway is truly a lonesome road... but beautiful. In the 300 miles we traveled today, we had only come upon a dozen northbound cars and trucks (and two bicycles). Southbound vehicles were also few and far between. The highway weaves its way between snow capped mountains, along raging rivers and beautiful lakes. The Cassiar is reputed to be an ideal highway to spot wildlife. Unfortunately, the wildlife must have had the weekend off because we only spotted one fox and one bear who apparently didn't get the memo.