We left Skagway on Saturday morning, but we didn’t get too far. At the Canadian Border we were the (un)lucky random vehicle to be searched – again! We had to pull off the road, put out both slides, unlock all the bays, unlock the car and wait. We were traveling with John and Diane again but they didn’t get searched, so they pulled aside to wait for us. Eventually we did get through and cruised on down the highway.
Shortly afterward we saw three bears in the middle of the road – a mama bear with two large cubs. Mamma trotted off the road when she heard us coming, but the cubs decided to run away from us – straight down the road. They kept looking over their shoulders at us as if they couldn’t understand why we were following them! Finally they veered off to the side of the road where Mama was waiting for them - probably shaking her head and wondering where she went wrong.
We used the Milepost again on this trip, and as usual it was very helpful. But this was trip had sort of a “Through the Looking Glass” feel because we were going backwards through the routes. I would get to a mile marker that said “look for steep grades in the next 10 miles” only after we’d already covered those miles.
This trip we didn’t get to travel very far with John and Diane. We parted ways at the head of the Cassiar Highway because they were heading out a different direction. So they went east and we turned south onto the Cassiar. The Cassiar is noted for being beautiful but rough; we’d heard varying stories about how rough, and decided to give it a shot. The beginning of the Cassiar was probably the roughest; it's packed gravel with lots of potholes. Eventually we did hit pavement but the road was always narrow and bumpy. At the end of the first day we boon-docked at the Rabid Grizzly rest area – not a comforting name, but we slept well. The next day we headed out as early as possible because we were focused on getting back to the USA. It would not have made sense to dawdle anyway, because not much seemed to be open. We didn’t see many services or RV parks along the way, and most of what we did see looked like they hadn’t been open for a long time. The road, even where it was paved, was not very good; there were a lot of steep grades, narrow turns, and no shoulders at all. But the view was really beautiful! Mountains rose up close to the highway, and the aspen had turned to such a bright golden yellow that they made the mountains look like they were covered in pollen. And there were big swatches of red fireweed along the road.
When we finally turned off the Cassiar and onto Yellowhead highway, we were very glad to find that it was a fully-paved road with shoulders. Sunday night we boon-docked about 120 miles outside of Prince George. During our trip we encountered many construction sites and at many of those sites we had to travel on temporary, narrow, gravel roads. This led us to discover that Canada has 2 seasons – winter and road construction. All the construction slowed us down so we couldn’t cover as many miles as we’d hoped in a day.
On Monday the goal was to get to Hope so we would be able to cross the border Tuesday. We stopped at Tim Hortons restaurant, which is a common Canadian fast food restaurant. There we had a good lunch and a needed break.
The final part of the trip was through Fraser canyon, where the road curved along the side of the canyon. It rained that day, which made it even less fun to be on a cliff-side road, but we made it through fine and boon-docked one more time around 8 pm, just outside of Hope.
Our final assessment of the Cassiar: it is indeed beautiful and it knocks about 200 miles off the trip; parts of it are still enough rough to add to the wear-and-tear on the RV; there are no turnoffs to get to another highway if you decide you don't like it and services such as fuel are very limited. So we would say it’s OK and we have seen the Cassiar.
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