August 2, 2019
Before leaving the Oceanside RV Park, I took a walk down to the harbor. It was a beautiful morning to look at the boats docked in the marina. There were no cruise ships today, so, the harbor was quiet. Haines is a beautiful, quaint, coastal Alaska town.
As we left town on the Haines Highway, we were happy to find that most of the roadwork was nearly finished…the blacktop was completed! We only waited on one pilot car today!
The Haines Highway is one of the most spectacular drives in the North. Today, the sky was hazy, but, we were able to see all the beautiful scenery that we missed driving south to Haines on Monday. The Scenic drive was truly awesome! There were plenty of places to pull-out and admire the views: mountains, glaciers, and lakes. It was amazing how many glaciers were visible from the road!
After crossing the Alaska/Canada border, the road skimmed the edge of the Kluane National Park and Preserve. The views were spectacular!
At Haines Junction, we returned to the Alaska Highway. From Haines Junction, the highway is bordered by a chain of 8,000 foot mountains and a few large valleys cut by glacier fed rivers.
The Alaska Highway followed most of Kluane Lake’s southern border and we had spectacular views of the lake. We planned to stop, but, somehow we missed the pull-out. Therefore, I didn’t get good lake photos.
We passed through Destruction Bay (pop. 55) and Burwash Landing (pop. 84). and we began to view the St. Elias Mountains and their Icefield. Canada’s highest mountain, Mount Logan, elevation 19,545 feet and 6 other peaks over 16,000 feet are in the St. Elias Mountains. Spectacular views!
We drove through a large burn area that affected acres of trees. As we drove through the area, it was sad to see so many trees destroyed. Reviewing my photos, the area looks eerily beautiful…not really a true picture.
Nearing the end of our travels today, we passed some vent-like structures along the highway. The vents were a permafrost research projct. They are trying to figure out how to minimize melting of the permaforst by allowing old air to penetrate the road embankment and increasing surface relectivity. We saw these on our last trip, so, the project is ongoing.
As always, we saw a few other interesting things on our route. We passed several groups of road-bikers that are biking to Alaska. We ran into them in Dawson Creek earlier on our trip.
We saw a Fiber Optic company laying cable all along the Alaska Highway. Who knew that fiber optics were needed in the middle of nowhere?
Our destination – Beaver Creek (pop. 112), Canada’s westernmost community.