Saturday, July 7, 2007

Alaska Caper - Day 26

June 29, 2007
Posted by: Dick Wilson

Start: Watson Lake, YT
Destination: Iskut, BC
Miles traveled: 220

Watson Lake has one claim to fame, a small park called the Sign Post Forest. Street and city signs from all over the world, mostly North America and Europe, are displayed in this 10-acre park. A Nampa, Idaho, sign was readily apparent, but I did not see one from Boise, although I cannot imagine that it was not there. It would be easy to miss even a medium-size sign, as they are jammed together from about ground level up to 20 feet in height in parallel, circumferential rows. People have obviously gone to substantial effort to bring these signs to this location. Some of them are quite large, perhaps 5 x 6 feet or greater. After visiting the Forest, we started down the famous Cassiar Highway. This took us through some spectacular country with beautiful lakes and rugged mountains. There was substantially less snow on these mountains than those in Alaska, but we are now many miles south. As we passed Dease Lake, we spied a semi-truck in the general store parking lot, hauling a canoe. This trucker’s motto was "no job is too small for us"–or at least it seemed as though that should be appropriate for him. We stopped at the Red Goat Lodge where we have a room for the night. We bought fishing licenses, anticipating a run at the trout in the Lake which apparently are quite plentiful and not difficult to catch. We parked out mud-crusted bikes for the night. We came perhaps 20 miles today on a gravel road in the rain, and mud covered the bikes from one end to the other. We will be looking for a car wash the day after tomorrow when we get back to the "civilized" portions of the British Columbia.

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