Day 43

The last 450km's of highway from Watson Lake through to Whitehorse is a glorious piece of road. Not only is it fast, wide and well surfaced, the scenery is wonderful, especially over sunset when we travelled it. Even more impressive is the way it got built - in 1942 thousands of US Army personnel laid nearly 2500km's of highway in less than nine months. I'm not sure of the original road quality, but it was an amazing feat all the same.

If I am to venture back to Canada with the express purpose of seeing more of one particular province, it will be Yukon - outstanding. Unfortunately our stay was all too brief, eventually heading back out of Whitehorse along the same stretch of smooth, fast and scenic Alaska Highway as we used to get in.

Before reaching Watson Lake and the Sign Forest again, we turned off south down highway 37 with the idea of seeing different part of BC. However, our first obstacle came just 100m's into highway 37 at what we took to be a queue for more road works. A few minutes later the

queue moved off and we waved to the lollipop man, bringing up the rear as the tail end Charlie. Just a few clicks down the road a small lake took my eye so I hit the picks and spun Jaffa in amongst the coverage of the willows for an impromptu picnic lunch. Half an hour later we were back on our merry way noting the proximity of the forest fires venting their carbon sink tonnage into the stratosphere.

A few photo op's later and we came across a pick up with orange flashing lights. We both pulled over, leaning out our respective windows to chat.

"Are you guys from the forestry department?" he inquired.

Whereupon Nancy and I were thinking, what the? We're in a convertible red Mini with the roof down, do we look like forestry workers? 

"No we're just travelling through" I replied.

It transpires that the queue we'd been in 35km's back up the road was for a forestry escort through this particular fire hot spot. The pilot vehicle leads the way and no overtaking or stopping until the other end of the escort area. It's just a pity they never thought to tell the people in the queue instead of making the assumption everyone in it was either local, au fait with such procedures or had at least watched, read or heard the news about forest fires recently. Being in none of the above, we had fallen outside the standard deviation of their bell curve and now become apparent reason for these two poor guys to cop a berating from over their RT as to who we were and why we were where we were if we were not forestry workers.

So we had to turn around, go back to the start and wait 45mins for the pilot to have his lunch before returning. Having said that, highway 37 down from the Alaska Highway is a fantastic road and definitely one we're glad we ended up taking - albeit three times. We tented in a small camp ground at Lake Dease which, by the way, has the nicest long-drop toilet/washroom I've used anywhere in the world.

The following day was set to be a decent drive of 900+ km's down to the city of Prince George. But not before we inadvertently went straight ahead at an intersection when we should have turned left. This detour took us to Stewart some 60km's out of our way but passed some great glaciers and waterfalls - again well worth the shortish diversion.

In Stewart I got talking to a lady at the liquor store when buying wine for dinner. She said I would kick myself if I'd come this far and not gone down the road to Hyder to see the bears feeding on the spawning salmon. What she neglected to tell me was that Hyder was in another country - Alaska, USA to be precise. 

So having inadvertently given our forestry pilot vehicle the slip, inadvertently ended up in Stewart 60km's off our path, we now ended up inadvertently in Alaska watching bears fish. But once again, it's well worth the effort if you get the chance. Heading out of Hyder, then Stewart we made our way back past the glaciers and waterfalls of 37a to rejoin highway 37 heading for Kitiwanga and a stop for dinner.

Dinner was a roadie classic taking place on a picnic table inside a children's playground bathed in early evening sunshine and no insects. It consisted of pasta with mushrooms and tuna, along with a baguette, brie, balsamic and olive oil dip and a nice Australian red.

There are moments in time that attain such a simplistic crescendo of perfection a person can measure the quality of their life by them - and this was one, thanks Nancy.

After dinner, despite an already full day, we still had some 500km's to go to get to Prince George. When we left Kitiwanga it was 28 degrees, nearing Prince George it was down to 5 degrees and I was very thankful for my icebreaker gear which along with Jafa's heated seats were keeping my quite toasty despite the lack of roof and relatively frigid air temperature.

In Prince George we gave Jaffa a bit of TLC, washing and vacuuming her before getting her an oil change and a tire rotation. Many people treat their cars as if they were an inanimate object. Personally I prefer to treat them with care and respect. The idea being that I look after them off the road and they look after me on the road - and I've never been let down, ever!

If you find yourself cussing and cursing the things around you, funnily enough you'll get things to cuss and curse them about. But if you care for and respect the things around you, you'll get things worth caring and respecting. And the same ethos applies to people, pets, partners or jobs.