Whitehorse to California

September 18:   The eastward drive on the Alaska Highway from Whitehorse to Nugget City, population 7, just before Watson Lake, was necessary but made no progress toward warmth.   Our cabin and supper that night were simple but adequate, but how Beaver Post got 4 Canada Select stars we don't know.

September 19:  We turned right off the Alaska Highway to go south on the Cassiar Highway, for 2 reasons.   The next 300 miles or so of Alaska Highway through the Rockies to Fort Nelson had just received waist-deep snow that made driving without chains difficult or dangerous, but better conditions were promised for the lower elevation Cassiar.   Besides, we'd long wanted to drive the Cassiar.  

We began with heavy photogenic snow on roadside trees , but in 10 miles left winter behind. 

Our GPS and signs said we had crossed to the south of 60 degrees latitude, the border between the Yukon and British Columbia.   The road still has a reputation for difficulty, which we think undeserved.  Yellow aspens, beautiful mountains white above 3000', and excellent pavement, a small part of it dirt, continued our whole day.   We had been in the beautiful colors of the northern autumn for most of our travel since arriving in Alaska, enough to justify our travel in shoulder season and cope with the first signs of winter.   Occasionally we passed by an Indian village with an English title, occupied by a "Nation" with a seemingly unpronounceable name.   But not as difficult as UQQRMIUT SANAUGAQARVINGAT in Nunavut.




We spent the night at Bell II, reputedly the best of the few hostelries on that road. It is a winter center for heli- (helicopter transported) skiing, with packages starting at about $4,000 US per week.   There are no utility lines to it, so satellite phone use by guests costs about $3 US per minute.   However, our room, with walls of peeled Douglas fir logs nearly 2 feet in diameter, was reasonable in price, as were our meals.  We had electric heat, but the Swedish soapstone wood stove was more fun.

September 20.   In one day we had gone from taiga with permafrost and stunted trees, to big tall trees and intensive logging.   Maps and specialized trucks and helicopters indicated we were in an area of  intensive mining and exploration.   Significant agriculture would begin a little further south. 

We left the Cassiar route, and went 40 miles west to the sister communities of Stewart BC and Hyder Alaska.    Hyder, at the extreme southeast corner of the Alaska panhandle, is a weird place.  Click here for some Hyder details   Once a silver mining boomtown, Hyder now has fewer than 100 residents.   According to the USA census the majority have an income below the poverty level.  Most of its buildings had fallen or seemed close to it, and its potholed main street was muddy with no defined edges.  The few little businesses accept or prefer Canadian currency, because the last USA bank closed in 1926.   Only the post office requires USA money and observes Alaska time.   Mail is taken to the outside world by float plane twice weekly, if Ketchikan visibility permits landings.   Side alleys were lined with big rusting paint-peeling mining machines, penetrated by trees that nearly hid them.   Apparently Hyder is the only place you are allowed to enter the USA without going through Customs and Immigration.   The road into Hyder continues beyond it for 20 miles, becoming worse, reentering Canada without formalities, and ending at the huge Salmon Glacier.   Back at the Stewart-Hyder border there was a Canadian sign warning that you won't be allowed back in without a passport or equivalent.   I can imagine a Canadian or American without papers forever confined to Hyder, sort of like the song about the Bostonian who had to ride the MTA forever.   The cold rain falling through overhanging dark trees is the norm for this coast.

It was not surprising that 3 times a local resident of  Stewart saw our Maine plates and told us Bangor is Stephen King's home.   This would be a great spooky set for one of his movies.   The Stewart-Hyder website listed among its suggested activities, "getting Hyderized", which the little tourist office defined as "getting stinking drunk".   We drove 5 miles toward Salmon Glacier, but turned around at a bear-viewing place on Fish Creek.   The salmon that migrate to there averaged 3 feet in length.   That was the end of the spawning season, so thousands of rotting dead fish littered the gravel shoals.  A few salmon near the end of their spawning and of their lives occasionally moved a little upstream, and surfeited gulls occasionally pecked at a carcass.   No bears appeared, so we left.  Back in downtown Hyder a black bear ambled across the street.

We left the next day in a heavy cold rain.   The 40 miles back to the Cassiar route were in a flat floored valley framed by black cliffs down which hundreds of temporary waterfalls tumbled.   Fog tendrils descended to earth, and the cliff walls converged so there was room only for our narrow road and new roaring torrents.   It was dark and eerie, like Hyder.   The road went by the receding Bear Glacier, where a few decades earlier the road was under it. 

An hour later the rain stopped and blue sky gradually replaced grey.   Our route reminded us of Norway, with small farms of crops and animals.   Occasionally we examined a small town like Hazelton, which took us back to the 1950s, with neat houses and lawns, small businesses, no chain stores, small museums, and obvious pride.   We phoned ahead to reserve a motel room in Vanderhoof,  site of the open pit Endako molybdenum mine, the world's biggest.  Most of its product was exported to China.

PS:  It closed in 2015.

We wanted to visit a unique town near our route, Kitsault (click). but didn't.   It was for sale, because the molybdenum deposit that was its reason for being isn't worth mining any more.   Illustrating that "location, location" are essential ingredients in real estate pricing, here's what you could have gotten for the asking price of $7 million Canadian (down from $23 million and descending): 90 furnished well-tended homes, 7 apartment buildings with 202 suites, a hospital, a shopping center still loaded with goods, underground TV and utility lines, 2 recreation centers, 8000 feet of waterfront, 320 acres, snowy mountains around it, and more.  It had a fascinating history:  click here.  We drove 700 miles from Vanderhoof to Seattle, with an overnight at Kamloops.   The road was a beautiful piece of engineering, allowing continuous 110 kilometers/hour posted speeds in spite of gorgeous spectacular mountain valley terrain.   Of all this trip, the area we want most to revisit is the southern half of British Columbia.

September 24 ±:  We stayed 4 weekend nights at a Residence Inn suite beside Lake Union in Seattle.  Through the Internet and some finagling we got an excellent rate, over our budget but cheap for a city. That was for 2 rooms with full kitchen, 3 phones, 2 TV's, a big varied breakfast with enough take-out food for lunches, free van service, in-house laundry, high speed Internet service, super-nice personnel, more.  This photo shows us enjoying supper at the revolving restaurant atop the Space Needle, with Mt. Rainer on the horizon.

We enjoyed the big farmer-fisherman market, a local train trip, and an Imax movie.   We wanted to use the monorail built for the 1962 World's Fair there, but it was closed, because in May it almost became to monorails what the Hindenburg was to dirigibles.   There was an electrical fire, injuries, and no way for passengers to escape the capsules and descend to the ground. 

September 27:   We took a ferry across Puget Sound, heading for Olympic National Park, which just 8 years earlier we couldn't enter, because of a recent windstorm.   We stayed 2 nights in motels and the 3rd in the excellent and friendly Miller Tree B&B.   There is an great variety of climate in the Park, from the eastern semi-desert with 20 inches of annual precipitation, to one of the world's few temperate rain forests on the southwest side, with 140 inches of annual precipitation.   We drove a spectacular high dry 9-mile narrow sinuous dirt road along Hurricane Ridge, and later drove into the Hoh Rain Forest.    There the ground cover is so lush that new little trees can't compete with them, so they succeed mostly along the high trunk surfacess of fallen giants.  So old trees are in groups aligned along fallen trunks that rotted away centuries earlier.   We were walking a trail in damp gloom when we heard an elk bugling, and Marge spotted huge antlers half hidden nearby.   Because stags may be aggressive during rutting (mating) season, I carefully approached him from behind a tree until the last minute, then took flash photographs.   Soon we saw 3 more, one nearly on the trail.   Since bushwhacking through the tangled forest to avoid him would have been difficult, we cautiously sidled past him on the trail.

Later in the roadside dusk we saw a black-tail deer, and a black bear on a river bank. 

The amount and thoroughness of clear-cutting in northwest Washington state, after that Park, exceeded by far anything we had seen in Maine.    Many hillsides were as bare as shorn French poodles, with all the roots and stumps piled for burning, while the brown uncultivatable ground was being prepared for the next mechanical harvesting.   The local majority seemed bitter about "Spotted Owl Environmentalists" and therefore voted Republican.   The Japanese timber companies they worked for were more subtle.

We had driven eleven thousand miles and 53 days so far, with about half that remaining before home.  Next we drove a counterclockwise route, ending in an eastern suburb of Portland.   We started with beautiful conifer and fall-colored deciduous forest, and spectacular Pacific coast -->

October 1:  Mount St. Helens was on our priority list before we left Maine.   We'd been reading increasingly strident headlines about a possible eruption.    This day we were blessed with a cloudless blue sky.  Near noon we suddenly saw through the windows of the Visitors Center a "POOF !" above the summit, a minor eruption but the first in the 18 years since the huge 1986 eruption.   The highest of several parking lots was crowded with media vans, and a news helicopter was aloft.  The picture below, looking towards the crater, shows the remnant of that eruption puff.   The second picture shows the remains of trees knocked flat in 1986.

 

October 5, 6 :   We crossed the great Columbia River and spent 2 nights at a Sleep Inn in Portland, Oregon, our favorite in its price range.   For its advanced ergonomics, breakfast, friendly personnel, and high speed Internet, we paid only $50 plus tax.  Because that autumn they were giving a free night for every 2 paid nights, that was equivalent to $33 per night.  That Portland was named by a Maine fur trapper.  Its population exceeded that of all of Maine.  Its infrastructure and pretty neighborhoods reminded us of Toronto.

Next we visited two perfectly preserved technological miracles built by a nation awakened from Depression torpor by WW2 -->

Tillamook, Oregon:  Here sits a blimp hangar big enough for dirigibles, now a museum of military aircraft.    Short of time, I went inside a back door only long enough to marvel at the vast gloom.   An old Ripley's "Believe It Or Not" said that the Lakehurst NJ dirigible hangar was so large it sometimes rained inside.  The Tillamook hangar is similar,  perhaps explaining the extra tarpaulin roof over the exhibited planes.

PS  8-17-2021:  That hangar was destroyed by fire this week.

McMinville, Oregon:  In 1947 eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes flew for one mile his colossal "Spruce Goose" airplane, mostly constructed of birch wood, and powered by 8 engines.   The War had ended so the plane was no longer needed, but fortunately he capriciously spent a million dollars a year to preserve it, until he died in 1976.   Disney preserved it for a few years more, then quit.   Later, dedicated volunteers had it shipped in pieces by barge and truck to its present home in McMinville, where we touched and entered it.    It looked as if it were in flying condition, and sculpted from black plastic.   Because of my sloth, unexpectedly sinuous back roads, distractions and construction we arrived at the museum 15 minutes before closing time, and we were not charged an entrance fee.

From Portland we made a circular drive to the east, through the Columbia River Gorge with its splendid waterfalls, and up to 6000' around Mt. Hood, shown next.

In the Gorge we found the Bridal Veil post office, the size of our living room.  It was a remnant of a lumbering town named after the nearby two-stage waterfall, and exists mostly to process annually about 200,000 wedding announcements and invitations with a distinctive cachet.

Bridal Veil Waterfall-->


























After Portland we spent 3 days zig-zagging south through the awesome geology and scenery of the Cascade Mountains.   From an overpriced motel in Sisters we drove through many miles of still-barren lava beds from an eruption about 200 AD.   We drove 120 miles on roads that would soon be closed by snow, with curves where tires squealed at 20 mph, and with no gas stations.   Marge's underpinnings had improved, so we walked a couple of one mile trails to beautiful high waterfalls.    We drove 2/3 the way around unique Crater Lake, where snow was predicted that night.   Then we escaped to lower warmer altitudes, but because of delays caused by the allure of interesting things, had 90 miles of difficult night driving in heavy rain to our next motel.

From here on this blog is more brief, because our trip became mostly just an American lower-48 road trip.   We expected to be home by Election Day, before our pills ran out and the pipes froze.

At a gas station in southern Oregon we found that state law prohibited car owners from pumping their own gasoline, so we drove to the next town, in California.   Big mistake: gas was cheaper in Oregon, and Alaska.... For all our fretting about fuel prices, it still cost less than generic bottled water, and gas in Europe.   When we completed this 3 month trip of about 17,000 miles at about 6 cents per mile for petrol, that totaled about $1,000.   That was about $11 per day: not the biggest trip expense.   With 70 set on the speed control we zipped southward on Interstate 5 as it left the mountains and entered California's agricultural cornucopia.    Autumn leaf colors, the peak of which we had followed from northern Alaska, were replaced by summer green and autumn brown.   Big trucks, safely separated, continuously occupied the right lane.  We were going to stay 2 weekend nights (October 9 and 10) in Sacramento at the usual Residence Inn weekend rate.   However, when we told the desk agent that we'd like to stay 4 nights, he gave us the "government employee" rate, which is about half the usual. Since that includes a studio apartment, free high speed Internet, a guest laundry, breakfast, which can be expanded to lunch, and a light supper with beer and wine, and other amenities, it was a pretty good deal.   We wanted those 3 full days there to rest from unrelenting travel, do chores, and see the city.   Sacramento would hardly have gotten our attention, but we realized it is important to our nation now, and significant in its history.    Its population was half the size of Maine's, and its real estate prices were at least double.   Two things prevented us from "doing" as much of the city as we had intended: ambient heat in the 90's, and too many doors locked on Sunday and Columbus Day.   Previously in this blog we've mentioned the many nice people we have met but haven't written of the many colorful ones among them.   Here are 3 from Sacramento:

* * A garrulous young waiter, a self-proclaimed polymath, e.g. "an etymological curiosity: the world's strongest creature, proportionately, is the rhinoceros beetle". We found that to be true:

**  The apparently lonely bartender, where we sought information and spent not a cent. "Let me tell you the best walk through the history of OldSac (the Old Sacramento district): it will only take 5 minutes". It took at least 10.

**  The waiter in an authentic "Persian" restaurant, who said he spoke 4 languages until he left Europe 5 months ago and started learning English.  He said Iran would never be a democracy, and told of common atrocities committed by local authorities.  He unsuccessfully tried to convince us that Arabic script is easy, by writing "Richard" phonetically, he said.   It seemed I looked pretty good in Arabic:
                                       ريتشارد
PS 10-26-17: Oh oh: Google Translate says that's "Palestine" in Arabic.
                                     

October 14 :  We drove from Bakersfield to Riverside.   Near Rosedale we picked a cotton boll, two almonds, and a huge rose, each from a mega-farm of the product.   Near Tehachapi Summit we saw thousands of modern windmills whirring.   At Mohave Airport we were unable to get beyond the front office of Scaled Composites, which had built the only plane to fly around the world without adding fuel, and the plane which recently won a prize for reaching the fringes of space.

We drove 65 curvy miles along the crest of the San Bernadino Mountains, where we'd                     been blocked by a landslide 4 Aprils ago.   Then we entered congestion and smog, which we could tolerate for a few days.  We visited family (Minots) and other friends (Plummers), and left Riverside for Grand Canyon on Tuesday October 18.

More blogger problems.    The rest of the trip story should appear below, but to get it  you have to click here for Rest Of The Story