We are just south of Edmonton, AB, tonight. Monday, when we were on the Kenai Peninsula, seems like a year ago! It is now Saturday night
We traveled back over the Alaska Highway, from Anchorage through Palmer and then through Gennallen and Tok, and on to the Alaska/Yukon border. The Alaska portion of the highway is in pretty good shape, nothing that 45-50 mph with adequate application of brakes from time to time for frost heaves, dips and ruts won't manage.
But then we went back over the portion in the Yukon, and that was truly horrific. In May it was not yet "road construction" season. But by early July they were in full swing. So we encountered not only the old, long unfixed frost heaves and breaks from the Yukon border to Destruction Bay, but also various other highway sections all the way to Whitehorse and really, almost all the way to Ft Nelson, undergoing the perpetual fixes and re-construction that occur. Usually this means either extended sections of gravel highway, or extended sections of seal coating (BTW, I HATE seal coating! Let there be no doubt about that! I think trucks just love to see how fast they can go and how much dust and how many rocks they can throw at RVs!) With either gravel road or seal coating, you are truly jinxed.
We are, therefore, "injured". Seven rock dings in the Saturn windshield at last count (new windshield required), 2 rock dings in the RV windshield (can be repaired), and the hydraulic tank for the levelers cracked due to the frost heaves (can be replaced by Gary. He's done it before). Currently we have no levelers. This is not a huge problem, but on unlevel parking sites, the inside feels, well, unlevel. We have heavy rock damage to the front of our poor, trusty Saturn. We are undecided about the repair we will do to the car body.
Now, in all candor, one can take steps to minimize this kind of damage (and in the past we have done this) - a rock guard mounted on the front of the car, car windshield screens. Did we do this? No. Gary thought about it, but we optimistically decided that it would be fine. We had made it up there in May with no problem. So it would be no problem on the return journey. Wrong! (This being said, there is nothing you can do about the RV windshield to protect that. And the cracked hydraulic tank? Well, that just happened.)
My bottom line to future travelers on the Alaska Highway (especially the Yukon portion): We were there 18 years ago, and then again 9 years ago, and the highway is no better today than it was then.
But otherwise we are fine. And these are all things that can be fixed.
We will be back in the US tomorrow, coming in at Shelby, Montana. Still some miles to go, but we are on our way.
It was all worth it. Some things you just can't put a price on. Having such great fun with family in such a beautiful place is priceless.
PS: For anyone who was paying attention to what I said our intended route back was: I said we would be on the Cassiar Highway, avoiding the Alaska Highway altogether, but we decided that with the leveler problem and a problem with one of our slides, it would be better not to do that. So we chose the other route. Interesting because we might have avoided all the rock damage. But the Cassiar was an unknown thing. We have been over it before when large portions were unpaved, muddy and/or dusty, and we read that while more is now paved, there are lots of frost heaves. Who knows? We never will.
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