Milepost, the bible of Alaskan Highway travelers seems to try to scare its readers, warning of all kinds of difficulties, from rock slides to long construction delays to snow closures. Anyone who complains about the Alaskan Highway has never driven across Mexico. So far the road has been fine; yes, I did say so far, and you'll hear about any problems that befall us down the road. To be sure, it's not an interstate; it resembles a not-so-great winding rural road in the US. And we drove about 400 miles on it today. The last 200 of those miles crosses the Rocky Mountains, so we had lots of ups and down and curves, requiring us to drive somewhat slowly. But, the scenery was so spectacular that no one would want to drive through it rapidly anyway. Besides that, if we had been going too fast, we might have missed the brown bear, freshly awake from his winter nap, happily eating berries by the side of the road. Neat, eh?
We saw a sign advertising a stuffed albino Moose at a museum in Fort Nelson. Who could resist that? So, now we have seen the world's largest steer, the largest stump and an albino moose. Those three sights alone would make our whole trip worthwhile. We also got to see a 20 minute movie, which I think was produced in the 1940's by the US Army, about the building of the Alaskan Highway. They built it in 20 months…all 1500 miles of it. According to the movie it was built to get supplies to Alaska to "protect it from the Japs" and they even used "colored soldiers who did a good job" on the project. For Marcella and I, seeing the movie and learning the history of the road (in spite of the Japs and colored soldiers) makes driving its 1500 miles even more exciting.
Tonight we are staying at a beautiful lodge on an even more beautiful lake called Muncho Lake. No, I didn't make that name up and I have no idea who did. The lake is all of five miles long, surrounded by high peaks and, strangely, the water is crystal clear up close, but when you view it from a distance, it's the most unique aqua color which, I'm told, is caused by minute runoff particles from the glaciers. They use a large generator for electricity here and food for the restaurant is delivered by a truck twice a week from Edmonton, which is 800 miles away. Where there's a will… We will gas up in the morning since this is the only fuel to be had within a hundred or more miles in either direction.
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