Following the Alaska Highway

Turns out our trip to the Yukon and back has followed two historical routes, both built around an urgent, chaotic rush to a goal. Our route north followed the gold rush - supply routes, telegraph locations or sites of the actual gold. Our return trip is following the Alaska Highway. Started in 1942 three months after the invasion of Pearl Harbour, the highway was slashed through the bush from Dawson Creek to Fairbanks, Alaska in 8 months. Everywhere there are reminders of the massive undertaking: Contact Creek - where the two teams from north and south met, Summit Lake - highest point on the highway (1295 metres), and Suicide Hill - apparently now improved! We stopped for the cinnamon buns we had read about and continued our animal count. Two caribou, one marmot, one moose. We camped in Buckinghorse River Provincial Park for the night - somewhere on the Alaska highway on the way to Fort St. John, back in mosquito territory.