Canada…The Return Trip

We drove 2,049 miles in five days. We left Fairbanks on Monday morning and crossed the US border into Washington on Friday. We decided to go a different route back than what we took to get to Alaska. On the way to Alaska we took the ALCAN so on the way back we took the Cassiar. I’d heard different things about the Cassiar, but after driving the ALCAN…well, it couldn’t get worse than that. We did have to backtrack the first 846 miles to Junction 37 Services in the Yukon. The area around Destruction Bay is the worst section of road known to man. I believe it got it’s name because it does its best to destroy your rig.

We drove by a herd of mountain sheep (perhaps Dall Sheep).

We’d seen loads of sheep in Alaska, but they all looked so tiny…perched on their rocks way up in the mountains. Honestly, they resembled fuzzy rocks more than sheep so it was neat to see some up close.

We got our daily quota of snowcapped mountains.

And then the Yukon threw in this amazingly bright rainbow! It was the widest, brightest rainbow we’ve ever seen.

Once we got to Junction 37, where we stayed overnight, the road was better. Not great, but better. The next morning, we got up and headed down the Cassiar Highway.

 The Cassiar has only been paved for about five years now. It’s narrow, very serpentine, and has some gorgeous views.

I told you it was narrow…it wasn’t much wider than one lane in some places.

One morning we got up and headed off and it was so foggy.  We got some beautiful views of the fog lifting from the valley.

The fog was really dense in some places and slowed us down a bit, but it didn’t last long.

Once we turned off the ALCAN back at Junction 37, we followed rivers and lakes all day.

The road snaked around and over rivers, ponds, lakes, and streams of all sizes. It made for some great views!

I wish we could have taken our time with this drive, there were a ton of photo opportunities that I didn’t really get to shoot because…well…it’s hard to get a decent shot from a bouncing, moving vehicle with bug splattered windows. There was an abundance of bugs.

If fact, almost all of the photos in this post were taken as we bounced over frost heaves and swerved around potholes while we were driving down the road.

Once we got into southern British Colombia, the road improved immensely. It was a welcome change. We also went from wild wilderness with towns dotted along the highway to farmland…something we hadn’t seen all summer.

I should probably tell y’all about the logging. This highway is a logging route and there were tons of lumber mills, logging camps,

and logging trucks. We didn’t have any incidents with them, but we did give them space.

We felt like we were driving into Fall. The colors changed almost as soon as we left Fairbanks.

As we made our way into Fraser Canyon, the lush green farmlands started changing into a landscape we didn’t expect to see in British Columbia…dry and very desert like, but with rolling hills. It reminded us a lot of Montana and even had the sage brush.

In the photo above you can see a set of the train tunnels. Train tunnels dotted the tracks the whole way through the canyon.

It was fun to see the trains slithering their way through the tunnels along the canyon wall.

We went through seven tunnels like the one above. The one in the photo is one of the longest tunnels in North America. The China Bar Tunnel was built in 1960 and is almost 2,300 feet long.

The only touristy thing we did on the way back, was the Hell’s Gate Airtram. The tram takes you 500 feet down and across the river to a small shopping center and a suspension bridge you can walk across.

Here’s a shot of the bridge. It was cold, rainy, extremely windy and you could feel the bridge sway and bounce. It was awesome!

Here’s a shot of the river from the middle of the bridge.

The stop was a nice way for us to stretch our legs before we made the final sprint to the border. It’s definitely a tourist trap, but it is neat.

They were selling fresh fudge…so, of course, we had to buy some. We ended up with just over a pound of fudge in three different flavors: Naniamo, Praline Chew, and Salted Caramel. They didn’t last long.

After we got out of Fraser Canyon, we got to an actual highway! It was bliss!

We crossed the US/Canadian border six times during our Alaskan Summer. We heard horror stories from other campers…and they were bad…but we never had any problems getting through. It was all very straight forward and very quick.

We’re so glad to be back in the lower 48! We had the best summer we’ve ever had…we learned a lot and saw more than we could have ever hoped to see…but the whole trip was very stressful. We’re planning on doing an Alaskan Summer review post with all the sticky details we didn’t put in all of the destination posts so stay tuned!

See y’all down the road!