Category: Notable Roads

A bit more than two weeks after leaving Mile 0 in Dawson Creek, BC, we arrived in Delta Junction, AK, at Mile 1422 and the official end of the Alaska Highway. Unlike Dawson Creek, where RVs line up for pix of the start and much of the town’s activity is focused on this unique claim to fame, there’s not usually much of a line at the highway’s end in Dalton Junction. Many travelers split off once in Alaska at Tok, choosing one of three directions, so there are fewer and far more distributed tourists arriving in Delta Junction, though we did see another RV during short our visit. And of course we did take the required Mile 1422 marker photo!

Along the Alaska Highway between Liard River, BC and Whitehorse, YT there are two small towns, a few service stops, and (as the highway crosses back and forth across the border) Welcome to British Columbia! and Welcome to Yukon! signs abound- making it no doubt the friendliest, least inhabited space we’ve ever visited. The Highway more or less follows the 60^th parallel, crossing between BC and YT six times before definitively crossing into Yukon just south of Whitehorse.

We entered Yukon for the first time at Contact Creek. As with many major transportation projects – the Canadian Pacific Railroad, Transcontinental Railroad in the US, the Channel Tunnel – work crews on the Alaska Highway started at both ends and worked toward each other, connecting in September 1942 at a place known ever since as Contact Creek.

Dawson Creek, BC, Mile 0, is the official start of the Alaska Highway (originally known as the Alcan). The history of the construction of the Highway is fascinating. Soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1942, the Japanese occupied two of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, then a US territory. In order to enable movement of military personnel and equipment to defend the territory, the US government needed a land route to connect Dawson Creek, then the northern terminus of rail service in North America, to Alaska. Begun in March of 1942, the 1,520-mile crude road through a wild, unknown sub-arctic frontier was completed in 8 months.

If you haven’t seen it, we encourage you to watch Building the Alaska Highway, a PBS special, to learn more about the historical, political and sociological perspective of this epic undertaking. If you’d like to experience ‘Wow!’ or  ‘OMG?!’ you’ll need to drive the Highway. That’s how the story comes to life.

Less than 10 miles outside of Tulsa, we started seeing signs for Route 66. Our band back home does that classic song! With so much of our travel on back roads, we’ve crossed Route 66 at least a few times in Arizona and New Mexico. As we rolled out of Tulsa we recognized that for the first time we’d be traveling right along the storied route. And it goes through St Louis – like it says right in the song!

So we started following signs. This could be fun!

Continue reading “Get your kicks…”

We wanted to explore north Ontario. Yeah, we hear you. You took a look at our travel map and said: ‘North? That’s not north!’ It is, in Ontario. There is exactly 1 continuously paved, east-west road across north Ontario – the Trans-Canada North.  There are a few paved roads that head north a few kilometers. And there’s one, mostly paved, 300 km (180 mi) road further north to a fishing camp at Pickle Lake. We don’t fish so we decided not to visit.

South Ontario? That is what’s east of Detroit.

Continue reading “North Ontario”