Driving the Alcan, Part 2

A week after my engine burn-out, Denver, the mechanic said the car was ready, but it might run a little hot - so keep an eye on it. I drove on toward the Alcan stopping near White Court to check it. I opened the hood and stood looking at the engine. All seemed well, and then, for some unknown reason, I reached over and opened the radiator cap. Hot water hit me directly in the face and eyes - what a dumb, damn thing to do??

I stopped a few miles further and the kind people at a filling station gave me some salve to put on my burned face. My eyes were OK but my face stung for several hours. I suffered the equivalent of a moderate sunburn the rest of the trip.

Dawson Creek, B.C. is the official start of the Alaskan Highway. Construction really started 10 miles west of the town in 1942 because a dirt road already reached that far. Dawson Creek is a northern agricultural region and the town is surrounded in late summer with beautiful yellow fields of canola. The population, at about 12,000, hasn’t changed since I first drove though. The main point of interest is the monument standing in the middle of town to mark “Mile 0” of the Alaska highway.

I kept a journal of the trip, but stashed it away, never looking at it again until recently. It is fortunate I dug it out as I find I have been giving misinformation about my maiden trek over the Alcan. For instance, I’ve told people for years that I crossed into Alaska and continued driving all the way to Anchorage on the 19th day of June, 1967. According to my journal it was the 28th of June. I’ve been celebrating my Alaskan debut on the wrong day for nearly forty years - that’s on par with having a 4th of July Parade on Bastille Day.

I was disappointed that gravel did not start at Dawson Creek's city limits, and remembered the first thirty miles out of Dawson Creek as being paved. My old journal informs me that the first eighty or ninety miles was paved.

I might have gotten some facts wrong, but my lingering impressions possess a certain credibility. There was a paved road and it looked much like the miles I had just covered, but heck, I was on the Alcan. I was supposed to be struggling through primitive country, not seeing farm houses or cultivated fields. I had expected to leave civilization at town’s edge. This is the impression remaining with me all these years, and I remember feeling a sense of disillusionment …but I remember, it didn’t last long.

A few miles further I came onto the Peace River, and descend into the valley below. Ninety miles out would have put me several miles past Fort St. Johns. That is when the road narrowed becoming as rough and rutty as any I’d seen. I began to wondered what I had got myself into. The next twenty miles were probably the worse I encountered. I navigated around deep ruts cut into the edge of the road. Some pot holes where deep enough to bottom-out, and my top speed was reduced to a creeping fifteen miles-an-hour. I decided I wasn’t going to punish myself or my lemon-yellow Oldsmobile. I was in no hurry, and I didn’t want to leave a trail of wasted tires streaming out behind me, so I covered much of the gravel at a modest 30 mph... or slower.

GO TO: Part 3