Cassier Highway and on to Whitehorse

Why people go up north

The answer will be later, but first some details. We left Glacier View Campground in Smithers on Friday morning. Mickey met the Seavoys from the U.P. in this campground. They were headed to Alaska for the 14^th year in a row…their son lives there. She’s a retired school teacher; not sure what he’s retired from. Turns out that Woodall’s didn’t have anything on the U.P., or wherever they were headed one year, so she called them and they hired them! They travelled for Woodall’s for twelve years. After about an hour drive we reached the start of the Cassiar, filled up with gas and found that the first third had been recently paved and was very pleasant driving. The scenery is similar to the Icefields Parkway in that we were running river valleys with great, but smaller, mountains on either side. There was an incredible amount of bear scat in the road, which brings to mind another mystery question for this trip: Why do bears scat in the road? Because it’s warmer, they don’t get tickled by brush or Mickey’s answer, because they can. The totem pole pictures are of a display at Gitanyow. Gary thought they were religious objects, but Mickey corrected him and said that they are symbols of their tribes. We did see three bear on our trip today. Mickey saw one that was lying down in the meadow, chewing on breakfast, looking totally comfortable. At one point, we drove for about an hour without seeing another vehicle. The gas stop was at Tatogga Lake, where the only occupant appeared to be John the gas man. John said to Gary, “you need gas?” Gary said, “Ya, how much is it?” John said, “$1.50L.” Gary didn’t respond right away and John said, “Are you sure you want some?” The dynamics being, it’s expensive gas, but when you’re in the middle of nowhere you have no choice. John commented on traffic being really slow. He’s still working off his first 12,000 tank load this year, when last summer, at it’s peak, he’d get a load a week. He said he’s not seeing the big rigs, motor homes, big fifth wheels this year. He then made us feel good by saying, “You have a sensible rig for this kind of traveling.” His nice comment helped offset the $1.50L. Gary asked John where he’s from. He said he moved up from the big city. Gary asked what big city, and he said Vancouver. He asked him why he moved and he said (and this is the answer to the question above), “There’s not enough air there.” I don’t think John was speaking physiologically but psychologically. If what John says is true, that there’s more air up north, it would help explain a lot of things. It’s why we go to Young State Park, Makanawa Island, the U.P. or, in our case, Alaska. The affects of there being more air on our up north trip are already apparent…better sleeping, closer relationship, we’re laughing more, meeting interesting people, eating simple foods that taste good in the open air. And of course, there’s the great one, a confirmation that God, with His general revelation, did a little extra up north! So, when you start to feel like those people in Tokyo who put a quarter or whatever in a machine to breathe two minute’s worth of “up north air,” think about going up north. And thank you, John, for the best “one” (sorry, Bethany Keeley) so far. I did ask John if he had a family. He said yup, back in the big city. I said they must miss you. He said ya, they’re coming up to visit. I said, well, they must love you. He said they love me to be up here. I didn’t know quite where to go with that one, so we just let it lay and we proceeded on. We spent the night at the Water’s Edge Campground on Deese Lake. Fifteen dollars a night, pit toilet, no showers, but a view that was well-worth it. Skeeters were free. The benefit of the mosquitos being the size of a small bird is that you can feel their weight when they land on you; makes for easy brush-offs!

Stats: 383 mi; 32.4 gal; 11.8 mpg; 46mph

Our first stop of the day for Saturday was a moose-shoot. He was having breakfast. (We thought about you, Laurel!) We stopped at Jade City, population 12. We were here four years ago where Mickey bought jade earrings. That store is no longer open. Apparently, there are a lot of rumors going around about the former owners, but no one really knows why it closed. So we went across the street to Cassiar Mountain Jade Store, where Mickey dropped a small wad. Gary met Emmet, a 60+ year old Bosnian Muslim. He’s been in Canada about four years and he talked about the incongruity of so much of the world hating America but they all want to move here. I think he called them a bunch of idiots, but with a heavy Slovic accent it may have been more duragatory yet. This illustrates the slow pace of life and news up here: Emmet wanted to know why those Democrats couldn’t settle the Michigan and Florida primary issues and get on with picking that woman or the black guy. Gary explained to him that that was a done deal as of about a week ago. Emmet said if they chose the black guy, wouldn’t that be something. What he said was, “There’s no place in the world except in America where something like that would happen.” It gave me kind of a warm patriotic feeling and we ended the conversation with me telling him, McCain’s a good guy too, Emmet. On the way out of the store, we met Peter and Vera Fischer from Halifax, Nova Scotia. They’ve been on the road for 25 days and Mickey noticed that Peter was wearing an S.S. Badger hat, acquired when they took the ferry across. In the course of the conversation, Vera referred to how long they’ve been gone and how long they’ve got to go at least three times. She even came right out and said, “I’m ready to go home.” He thought we were pretty brave by planning on taking the Top of the World Highway. Peter was obviously excited to be going even further north on the Dempster Highway. Look at your map; we’re talking serious Arctic Circle-plus driving. Vera kindda shook her head and again said she wanted to go home. We did notice that in the cab of their truck camper they had a little “foofoo” dog; hope that keeps Vera company and happy.

We got gas at the Junction and turned left on the Alaskan Highway. We stopped for lunch at Rancheria Falls Recreation Site and did a pleasant walk to the falls. They were very similar to Tequanaman in that the water had the same burned brown color, probably from the tannins. We met the Finners from Wildwood, Alberta, who were on a journey north, not sure where they were going. They winter in the States and we think were on their way back home, the long way. Shortly after we pulled out, we saw Peter and Vera at a rest stop, blew our horn and waived.

A little about our XM Satellite radio. The normal daily drill is to start out with CNN or Fox and get the news. After being sufficiently depressed, we switch to, if Gary’s driving, 34-Gospel, or if Mickey’s driving, 14-Bluegrass Junction. Occasionally we’ll do the laugh channel. For 100k we laughed with Bill Crosby, Bob Newhart, Ray Ramano, Jeff Allen, Henny Youngman, Jonathan Winters, and many others. They were doing a “father’s stuff” in light of Father’s Day coming up. Jeff Allen told two stories that we’d (Gary) like to share that were about teenagers. The first one was he said he has a teenage son who knows everything, questions his authority and doesn’t want to acknowledge his existence. He then said that teenagers were God’s revenge for rejecting His authority and denying His existence. He said he the Bible didn’t say how old Satan was when he rebelled against God, but I’m pretty sure he was 15. O.K., here’s your astronomy and geography lesson: XM Radio receives its signal from a west coast satellite off California. The further north we go, the flatter the angle; and when we’re on the lee side of a mounting, no signal. Gary’s hoping we find a flat spot in Dawson City on Sunday to hear Boston beat Kobe.

We are now camped in Whitehorse, where there is no cell phone signal. So we are out of touch with reality! However, we have a weak WIFI here at the campground, thus the new blog. We had dinner at the Yukon Mining Co., which was Gary’s Father’s Day dinner. The skeeters are persistent here as well! For you pilots the DC-3 is the wind tee at Whitehorse Airport.

Stats: 415 mi; 36.6 gal; 11.4 mpg; 51 mph