Teslin Lake, YT to Boya Lake, BC – 240 Miles There’s a hint of fall in the air. We first noticed it going down to Valdez a week ago. There were signs of gold on the tips of a few aspens along the road, and the willows were subtly following, just starting to turn yellow. The nights have been averaging about ten degrees cooler – mid-40’s instead of the mid 50’s we’ve had since starting up the Alaska Highway a month ago. Perhaps as we head south as we now are, we’ll outrun autumn until we get home for the changing colors in Colorado in late September.
Today we passed two milestones: the trip odometer rolled over 6000 miles and we bid the Alaska Highway farewell as we turned onto the Cassiar Highway just a few miles west of Watson Lake, YT. Actually we did go into Watson Lake to pick up a few groceries and backtrack the twelve miles to the Cassiar junction, but we’re now headed south for good. We even have now bid adieu to the Yukon Territory as well, as we entered British Columbia just a few miles after the Cassiar Highway junction.
The Cassiar Highway is kind of a “back door” into Alaska, running up through western BC from BC 16, the Yellowhead Highway which cuts east-to-west through the middle of the province. The Cassiar runs generally north-south, joining the Alaska Highway, as I said, just west of Watson Lake at KM 1002 (the highway markers are in kilometers in Canada). It’s not nearly as good a road as the Alaska Highway, at least for the 70 or so miles that we’ve been on it. It’s paved, but with a lower grade, rougher-textured asphalt. There are no shoulders and no center stripe, but it’s wide enough for two vehicles to pass, including large trucks. It winds around a lot more than the main roads. About ten miles south of the junction with the Alaska Highway, the Cassiar enters a large burn which continues for approximately 30 miles. It appears to be fairly recent, within a year or two, as it’s just now starting to get new growth on the forest floor. Fortunately, we passed out of the burn area into green spruce/aspen forest before arriving at our campground, Boya Lake Provincial Park, at KM 639.
This is a wonderful, small campground with about 40-50 campsites, located on the shore of Boya Lake, a small, emerald green body of water set back two kilometers from the highway. We are set up literally a dozen steps from the water’s edge, looking across the water at a band of solid green spruce trees with a backdrop of low hills in the backdrop. It has to be one of the prettiest campsites we’ve had so far on this trip. Right now I’m writing this sitting alongside a campfire, with my honey at my side. We are truly blessed.
P.S. I think I forgot to include the answer to the hat question yesterday. Reverse dimorphic means that the female of the species is larger than the male. At least that’s the answer that satisfied the captain.
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