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The Alaska Highway: A Road of Wilderness Mystique – Dawson Creek to Fairbanks

The black bear interrupts its roadside food to have a look reproachfully at the intruders. The bus driver slowed down so we can Gape. His cry alerting the passengers is one we hear often on the Alaska Highway, and not only to observe bear.

Dall sheep, standing out in brilliant white against rocky mountain slopes. Moose, elk, grizzly bears in the distance. A lone wolf slouching in our way. Caribou sighting becomes old hat.

The highway is exploding with life and color and salmon are running. Once, as our Greyhound bus skirts a river, we see a bald eagle once down in the water, claws extended. For a brief second rises with a huge salmon in its grip. The struggle of the salmon and carries its own weight in Eagle River. Hunter and prey in fact become submerged.

So suddenly as it had gone, the eagle reappeared or spraying, but sadly clinging to his capture. Barely able to flap their wings, fighting his way out of the water never releasing his hold on the salmon.

The driver tells us he had seen similar events – but then anything is possible along this path the mystique of the wildlife. The length of the Alaska Highway is the only is daunting – 2378 kilometers.

This is a postcard of a spectacular landscape. As the road moves north and west, changing the landscape of vast fields of grain to a more rugged mountainous land, filled with white river Snow, turquoise lakes and glaciers of blue ice. Classic north woods are full of wildlife and wildflowers.

Land is also a mosaic of people who drive lodging, fly airplanes Bush man gas platforms and drive trucks.

Travelers meet veterans like Dean (Old Griz) Elston, who teaches "CHEECHAKO" (novice) how to pan for gold in Kluane Wilderness Village in the Yukon.

Old Griz itself is a "mother dough," the affectionate name given to the veterans. There is only one way for a CHEECHAKO to become a sourdough: see the freezing of the river in the fall and stay to see the ice brake parts milling in the spring. Old Griz, a bulldozer operators who helped build the Alaska Highway in 1942, has some incredible stories to tell.

The road was completed in an astonishing eight months, probably the greatest engineering feat since the construction of the Panama Canal. The project was a company in wartime. The Alaska Highway ties throughout the United States and could have served as a way to move troops if Japan had attacked the area. He also served as an overland route to supply chain dirt airstrips in northern Canada and Alaska, which provided facilities for emergency landing for the 8,000 warplanes carried to the Soviet Union.

At peak construction, about 11,000 U.S. soldiers and 7,500 civilians, with 11,000 pieces construction equipment on the road at a frenetic pace of 13 miles a day, sometimes in temperatures of 40 degrees Celsius.

It was a hard life. The men had to build 133 bridges and 8,000 culverts. Machinery suddenly crashed ice accumulation piles, bridges after flooding rains tore heavy or rapid glacier melts, muskeg fund swallowed trucks and excavators.

Gradually, a rough, bumpy track took shape, the forging of a highway on fen, through forests, over five mountains and river canyons.

The road builders were plagued with the mosquitoes and black flies. A popular story is that it built two airstrips in Whitehorse, one of the planes, and the other for mosquitoes. A veteran who once swore someone mistook a mosquito flying boat and tried to refuel it.

The Alaska Highway is still a deserted road today, but many of the curves were straightened and the two-lane road is paved. There is occasional evidence of human habitation – hamlets hidden among the trees, a group of cabins Wood, a roadside cafe or motel – but mostly is a very lonely road.

Each year about 200,000 travel its length. We chose the easy way – that "rode the dog," and let the Greyhound bus drivers do the job.

The journey started in Dawson Creek, in northern British Columbia, Canada, where the famous Mile Zero sign post is a magnet for tourists. The coach said his nose to the long, narrow strip of the road and the first 900 kilometers threaded their way through quiet, rolling prairie.

After Fort Nelson came to the Rockies. The road passes through two provincial parks and communities through rustic as Summit Lake and Toad River. Then the winds across the Liard River valley and along a ancient trade trail of the Indians and fur.

When the Greyhound moved to Watson Lake, we were in the Yukon, where the sun shines at least 20 hours a day during much of the summer.

The bus stopped a few meters from the Sign Post Forest. Here in 1942, a soldier of nostalgia, erected road work a sign pointing to his hometown in Danville, Illinois. Over the years, others followed his example and today there are 20,000 signs, of every shape and size, most they "robbed" of their towns and cities.

After leaving Watson Lake, the Greyhound up beside the picturesque River Rancheria, through the extensive mountain valleys of the Yukon to Whitehorse, capital of the Yukon.

Whitehorse's buildings are a happy blend of pioneering spirit and sophistication urban. Log cabins share streets with modern office buildings.

It is also full of history of the great Klondike gold tip. Whitehorse was one of the points stop for the fortune of the 30,000 hunters who poured into the area of the city of Dawson, the late 19th century.

The SS Klondike sternwheeler now rests on the edge of Yukon River. She and her sister ships were once the mainstay that links the city of Whitehorse and Dawson.

The Yukon is named after an Indian word, " Yuchoo, which means "the greatest river". It is an appropriate name for a river flowing through what is still a vast frontier and virgin a network of rivers, forests, high mountains and glaciers.

Much of the Yukon is still unserved by road. The only way is to paddle, walk or fly a float plane. There are only 30,000 people scattered over its 483,000 kilometers square, but also is home to more than 200,000 caribou, moose 50,000 25,000 thinhorn and stone sheep, 10,000 black bears, 500 wolves and 254 species of birds.

Beyond Whitehorse, the road skirts the 22,000 square kilometers Kluane National Park. Kluane is an Indian name for "fishing place" and its lakes and rivers teeming with salmon and trout. At its heart is a sea of ice — the largest non polar ice fields in the world – that the massive flow through glaciers in the valleys. From here the road of Alaska has a relatively flat to Fairbanks.

Our bus made a stop in North Pole, a small town about 20 kilometers before Fairbanks. This is where the U.S. Post Office delivers all mail that comes to Santa Claus. This is where Santa's elves are scrambling to meet all Christmas Wish – a place that makes dreams come true.

Dreams like ours – to drive the Alaska Highway.

Pioneer Log Homes of British Columbia