August 23 – Sep 3: After our extended stay in Fairbanks, we headed out to finish the small portion of the AlCan Highway, from Delta Junction to Tok and continued south. Tok, Alaska to Watson Lake, Yukon was a repeat that boasts the “worst roads” on the AlCan. The weather was much better than when we were driving north in mid-July and the “worst roads” were not a problem or a discouragement. We just enjoyed the amazing scenery.

We dropped due south just west of Watson Lake to take a new route home, the Cassiar Highway, which tranverses British Columbia north to south. Now that was a challenging highway. Despite slow driving and watching all of warning signs carefully, we managed to hit the worst pothole, about midway on the Cassiar, we’ve ever experienced that was hidden a puddle from the light misty rain. The result was a broken leaf spring on our trailer, which Tom obeserved, “at least it broke in a favorable position”. With no cell service and seemingly OK to drive, we plodded along the remaining 240 miles to our campground in Kitwanga River. The next day, we drove slowly drove another 80 miles, had the leaf spring replaced and were on the road after lunch, avoiding lossing a day. Amazing…despite our disasters, we always seem to get them fixed in a reletively timely manner.

We were thrilled to make a repeat visit to the Okanagan Valley, BC, where we spent nearly a week in August 2018. Thankfully, we didn’t experience any of the smoke from fires and were able to see the scenery we missed 6 years ago. We repeated a hike from 6 years ago and visited a winery we liked for a tasting and lunch. With the sun and warmer weather, we felt engerized.

The rest of our trip went well as we stopped in Chelan, WA to spend Labor Day weekend with my brother, Jay, and his wife, Katharine. Then power-drove home in two days landing back in Lafayette, Colorado on Sep 3, after about 8500 miles and a little over 2 months on the road and we visited 7 of the 8 national parks in Alaska, only missing Lake Clark NP due to weather.

Cassiar Highway from the Yukon to Okanagan, British Columbia and Chelan, Washington