Alaska - Day Three: 1301.7 miles to Dease Lake, BC

I woke up and had a revelation (probably inspired by something I read in The Milepost). There was no reason to go to Hyder, Alaska yet. It was too early in the season, the salmon weren't running yet and there wouldn't be any bears. And bears were the main reason to go to Hyder. So plans changed and we would just keep right on driving north on the Cassiar Hwy.

But first we had to stop and see the World's Largest Fly Fishing Rod in Houston! And get my free souvenir pin. They gave me two. That's when I decided to start collecting pins on our trip...

Houston is a forestry town but they also have an open pit mine, extracting copper, molybdenum, silver and gold. They are also pretty into fish and flowers. Steelhead Park was full of beautifully manicured flower beds and fountains.

Outside of Smithers was a trail to Twin Falls that we wanted to take, but it had started to rain. Then we realized that if we didn't do something just because it was raining, we'd never do anything. So we put on our jackets, grabbed our walking sticks (the ones Zack made us when he went to Alaska) and hit the trail...

Just before we got to Hazelton, we saw a black bear run across the road! Only our third day and we already saw a bear!

While in Hazelton we stopped to see 'KSAN Village. Lots of cool Gitxsan longhouses and totems. They also had very nice washrooms. When you're on the road, you start noticing these things... :)

We'd heard stories of the Cassiar Highway. And they weren't very flattering. But, we didn't have much choice. So we stopped for gas and drove north with the rest of the voyagers detoured from the Alaska Highway...

Right after getting on the highway, we saw another black bear. Unfortunately, this one was dead in the road. Probably hit by a semi truck. :(  Shortly after we could smell smoke. Not wood smoke but a burning rubber smell. Then we saw the black smoke and some guys standing by a semi truck on the side of the road.

Then this guy somehow got sucked into the van through the air vents...

Meziadin Lake Provincial Park seemed like a good place to have lunch. We were right! Nice view and very nice pit toilets!

We met a couple who had also stopped for lunch and had been on the scene when two German tourists rolled their car off the road and it burst into flames. That explained the smoke, and the two young guys with the truck driver. Thankfully, they got out ok but lost everything in their car! They also told us that Battle Hill was closed because of flooding. That explained the big digital sign telling us that we had to go on by the first scheduled stop on the Cassiar.

The highway seemed great! We couldn't figure out what people were talking about.

Then the road changed. It got much more narrow and no more center line...

We stopped to see the imaginary line that marks the divide between the Pacific and Arctic watersheds.

Unlike the day before, it rained off and on all night but quit just as we got to camp.

We got to the town of Dease Lake, got gas and decided it was probably time to stop for the day. We found an ad for Water's Edge Campground. It sounded pretty nice with free wifi and right on the lake. This is when we learned that when The Milepost says "toilets", it means pit toilets not real toilets. No phone reception, but there was the promised free wifi as long as you sat in front of the office building in the grass...

But we did have a lovely view from our picnic table for our super fancy supper of roast beef, mashed potatoes and green beans all cooked in zipper bags in a pot of boiling water on our backpacking stove.

This is also when it really started to hit us that it never got dark. It was a bit dim in the van but it never got dark outside. We were eating dinner much later than normal but still going to bed at 11:00 in the light. So strange!