Along the Alaska Highway

Day 15 Dawson Creek to Fort St. John. Distance 55 miles.

It's amazing to think how quickly you're done with a 55-mi ride. We even left Dawson Creek late because we went out to breakfast, cycling the one mile back to town in our street clothes. The time change had us awakening at 5 am so we had a leisurely morning. I had time to send e-mails and Skype with Janet!

Today was Rick's day to burn rubber! He got out in front, and pretty soon we could barely see him off in the distance. Bert and I "time trialed" to see if we could gain on him, but couldn't. He was high flying on that bike, and arrived in Fort St. John an hour before the RV and more than two hours before I did, and I was the next rider to arrive after touring a little of the town first.

The highlight of my day was taking a slight detour to ride along a portion of the original, unimproved (well, improved since 1942, but not up to current road standards) section of the Alaska Highway to this famous bridge. The Kiskatinaw Bridge is the only original bridge on the Alaska Hwy still in use. And, it was quite the engineering marvel in 1942 because it was the first curved bridge (a 9 degree curve) built in Canada. It's made entirely of wood, and even today its road surface is wood.

The original road down to the bridge and back to the current highway was cool too because it allowed me to visualize how the builders in 1942 had to just plow down a path through the thick forest, as I'd seen in the video at the museum yesterday. Here's a shot of the empty road, and by golly it was empty; during my entire 6-mi detour, only one vehicle passed me in either direction, and it was a local.

Since seeing this bridge was the highlight of my day, I'm compelled to post one more picture of it as I ascended the hill after crossing it. You can see the gorgeous river valley it spanned. I wish the other riders had taken the detour to see this too, but the sign on the highway made it sound like it would be an extra 6 miles, but at most it was only an extra half mile.

After that, the route was rolling across open farm land into a pretty significant headwind. Eventually I came to the Peace River Valley and a steep drop to the bridge. Interestingly, the original bridge here in 1942 was a suspension bridge, the longest of the more than 200 bridges along the entire Alaska Hwy. However, in 1957 it collapsed! Luckily, no one was hurt because a truck driver noticed something amiss and reported it, and sure enough, the engineers predicted it was about to fail and blocked all vehicle traffic. The next day, 3000 people witnessed the northern portion of it fall into the river with a deafening BOOM. Here's a picture of the replacement bridge dated 1960:

Once I arrived in Fort St. John, it was early so I decided to ride into the town and see if there was anything to see. The visitor center offered a walking tour, which I did, but it wasn't too exciting. I saw Bob and Derek there, and they were headed to a pub for lunch. The California Bear cycling kit I wore today started several conversations with people, so that was fun.

I finally left town (population 18,000, so it was just a big busy city) and rode the additional four miles to the "campground". I put that word in quotes because all it is is a gravel parking lot. Here's proof! You can see our motorhome way at the back, 4th from the left. As I write this three hours later, it has really filled up and they're still coming in, because this is their big Canada Day weekend. I want to take a picture from the same spot tomorrow morning to illustrate before and after the weekend crowd arrived.

I took that picture as Rick, Bert and I were walking to the pub adjacent to the campground. The food and drink were quite yummy!

My final picture is the monument to another Alaska Hwy story, this one a tragedy. Right next to this campground is a lake, and in 1942 the engineers wanted to move material and equipment ahead by using a hastily built barge on the lake. They launched it as a squall was approaching, and before the barge could reach its destination, the squall hit and two big waves capsized it, drowning 12 soldiers (the other five were rescued by a local fisherman). In my photo, that's Derek on the right. The names of the dead are on the top of the 12 posts surrounding the monument. (You can see my RV in the background through the opening in the monument.)

Tomorrow's distance is 89 miles, but Sunday (Canada Day) we will ride the longest of the entire trip - 142 miles! That day, all four of the drivers will take a turn at the wheel. Even so, our cycling distances will be about 105 miles each, and we'll drive about 35 miles each. We're just hoping that when we're finally done, we will be treated to fireworks in Fort Nelson.