Day 10—Alaska Highway and Laird Hot Springs

We got on the road in Ft. St. John and didn’t stop (except for gas and a pitstop) until we arrived at Laird Hot Springs Lodge across the street from the Laird Hot Spring Provincial Park. The drive took us into the Northern Canadian Rockies and was very pretty. We have come to note the following things about driving in Canada on the Alaska Highway:

****there are no straight passages of road greater than a couple hundred yards the entire trip is up and down, up and down, and occasionally around a mountain drive “on the top half of your gas tank” because there probably won’t be gas for another 100 miles or more
****it will cost you $2 for a soft drink at a gas station so it is cheaper to buy 40 oz. slushies/icees for the kids at $1.59
****if you are tempted to buy 40 oz. slushies for the kids, remember that if it is more than 100 miles to a gas station then it is more than 100 miles to the next bathroom…so scale back to the 28 oz. slushie (which will be even cheaper)
****plan to pay between $4-$6 per gallon of gas and remember to gas up in any bigger sized town you pass because in between towns (several hundred miles) you will only have one place to choose from and will pay a premium
****the gas stations in the middle the wilderness (and some of them in the bigger towns) take me way back in time…no choices between regular and premium gas, no credit card slots, no latches on the handles so you don’t have to squeeze the pump the whole time, and you have to lift the lever on the side of the machine to activate the pump
****If there is road construction, plan to be there for up to an hour waiting for your chance to go through (today’s stops took 1 hour, 30 min, 10 min, and 5 min.) because Canadian’s don’t believe in small projects and you are driving on hillsides so there is a “lead car” that takes the groups of cars through the one usable lane of the rode…and he drives as if he has all day to lead you safely through the construction zone.
****If a sign says “Watch for Caribou on the Road”, you better be keeping your eyes peeled. We had to stop 5 times for caribou in the road…usually just one or two but still “in the road” for sure.

After we arrived at the Liard (lee-ard) Hot Springs Lodge (at the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere) and checked in, we ate dinner in the lodge dinning room. Chris and I had Buffalo burgers for the second time on our trip and thought they were really tasty. Apparently there is a wild buffalo herd just down the road and the employees joked that the burgers were “prepared just this afternoon”. We browsed in the shop and found a bumper sticker that would prove to be true as we walked to the Hot Springs. It said “For the record: There is not a single mosquito on the Alaska Highway…they have all married and had very large families”. After dinner we walked across the street to the Hot Springs. It cost $10 for our group to go to the Hot Springs…and it was worth it. (There is a book that Shaun purchased for me called “Mileposts” and it is published annually. If you are traveling in Canada or in Alaska on the major highways, it is a fabulous resource because it tells you milepost by milepost what you will expect to find. We have found it to be very accurate and it is how we found our lodgings for tonight.) We walked through the parking area and down a long boardwalk over a marshy area before arriving at the hot springs. The water rises super hot from the depths at one end of a creek type area. The water is about 3 ½ feet deep and the area is about 15 feet wide in the widest part. There is a manmade waterfall (see picture of the three kids and a stranger) that separates the hotter part from the cooler part. The water is crystal clear and ranges from 108-128 degrees and stone benches have been placed in a few locations underwater for resting on (one is under the waterfall). The creek bottom is made of fine rocks so it is easy on the feet to walk around and boardwalks and stairs have been built on one side of the spring for easy access to the water. In the hottest part of the hot springs where the water is bubbling out of the ground, there is a natural stone wall that blocks off the hot area. On top of the natural looking stone walls, we saw piles of smaller rocks. These rocks are placed there by bathers who brave the extreme heat from the closest steps through the water to the wall and place a rock on the wall…thus being granted “good luck” according to folk lore. Barb, Sullivan, and I each did the daring water walk and put stones on the wall…Chris and Dharma couldn’t be talked into it so I did a second one in their honor…and for Shaun who couldn’t be here with us. We all loved Laird Hot Springs and hated to leave when we finally dragged ourselves out. But back to the mosquitoes…they bit us during the walk to and from the hot springs and while we were in the water. At one point, I laid back in the water with my ears covered and floated…looking up at the sky and gazing at the trees…admiring the peacefulness of the location…and noting the dozens of fly-sized mosquitoes zipping around above my body. No other bugs, just mosquitoes. Yikes. How true that bumper sticker was!! Anyway, we are now back in our lodge. Chris is playing America’s National Parks Addition of Monopoly with the three kids while I write this. I bought this for them at Glacier National Park and they are having a good time because now they have been to many of the places in the game. The kids and I have the family room…two double beds, two twins, a bathtub/shower combination…a nice log cabin room. Chris has a room at the other end of the hall with two twin beds and stand up shower. There are no alarm clocks, no internet, no cell phone service…just rain starting up outside to fall asleep to. We hope to get a good night sleep and hit the road at an early hour tomorrow. We have traveled 431 miles today and gone a trip total of 3685 miles. At our next stop, we hope to post this.