Trip Blog & Members Section

May 2010

Into the Wild…

I asked my boss for a week off at the end of April. “No problem, where are you going”….”Alaska”…”For a week, in April, you must be mad”…..

Yup, time for a Rocky Mountain scouting mission. Regular visitors to our website will see that we added a one way trip from Anchorage to Vancouver to our schedule for this year, so I decided to meet Brandon in Anchorage and drive the route in advance of the tour in June.

After a brief panic about the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano, I arrived in Anchorage safe and sound but a tad jet-lagged on Saturday afternoon. It’s fairly quiet there at this time of year. They are gearing up for the summer season when all the cruise ship passengers arrive. Souvenir shopping is big in Anchorage and after a brief search we found the ideal store for most of our requirements….

We spent Saturday evening sampling the various ales on offer from the Alaska Brewing Company. From what I can remember of them they were very good. After a snowy Sunday exploring the area South of Anchorage we headed North to Fairbanks. Once you get clear of Anchorage and Wasilla (home to one Sarah Palin, the rootin’, tootin’ ex-governor of Alaska) you begin to realise how vast and deserted this state is.

Fairbanks will be the destination for the 2nd and 3rd nights of the trip, so we decided to a bit of research for a day off ride. Better not give too much away, but let’s just say I didn’t expect to find somewhere like the Chatanika Lodge, which has the most expensive ceiling coverings I’ve ever seen!

Although Brandon had already driven some 4,000km in a few days travelling up to Alaska from Vancouver, we then thought about a little detour up the Dalton Highway, following in the footsteps of those legendary TV stars, the “Ice Road Truckers”. When you are that close, what’s an extra 800km on the day’s journey! The paved road runs out about 100km from Fairbanks and then it’s a long and tough gravel road across the Yukon river and up to the Arctic Circle. After some rough calculations, we realised that we had plenty of fuel to get us back to civilisation. Actually that bit’s not quite true. We reckoned we would have about 10k’s of fuel left by the time we hit the next gas station. So we turned around and headed South, treating the gas pedal with ultimate respect.

It’s on these long road trips that at some point we invariably end up discussing the merits of junk food. I’ll bow to Jarvis’s superior knowledge on beef jerky (although following extensive research, World Kitchens Brown Sugar should be near the top of his list). I’m more of a Doritos man myself. In the UK the flavours available are a bit limited….as for the States though. I have discovered that there are 15 or so different flavours plus the combination packs….Cornsnacktastic!

We headed South East from Fairbanks, taking a leisurely route through Paxson and then back up to Tok. I guess it’s about time I mentioned the scenery. It is, to put it mildly, and using the North American vernacular…awesome…..and that is not an understatement. On the Icefields Parkway you have about 150km of stunning scenery. Here, it just goes on for days.

and days…..

Once we crossed the border back into Canada, things sped up a bit. We took a quick stop in Whitehorse and Watson Lake before turning South onto the Cassiar Highway. This road is about 725km long and I reckon we saw about 10 vehicles the whole time we were on it.

At the southern end of the Cassiar we turned right and a couple of hundred km later arrived in Prince Rupert for a well earned rest during a 20 hour ferry ride down to the northern tip of Vancouver Island. The ferry route runs through the Inside Passage and is sheltered from the open waters of the Pacific. There are some great views of pristine coastal wilderness during this cruise and we even spotted a couple of killer whales…albeit from a distance.

Once we hit Vancouver Island we were back on more familiar territory. A brief coffee stop at a great little spot called Telegraph Cove, followed by a drive down the East side of the island and a quick ferry ride back to Horseshoe Bay saw us back in North Vancouver. Just enough time to try out a new fish restaurant on the North Shore and then back to the UK.