Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The next morning we visited the Signpost Forest, where at last count (2002) there are
49,777 signs nailed into tall wooden posts. A sampling:
COLORADO INTERSTATE 35
KANGAROO CROSSING
MANYBERRIES, ALBERTA
KITZBUHEL
GARY STRACEK CONST. / BROWERVILLE, MN
(if you live in Browerville and need a contractor, there you go)
MORRO BAY, 2520 MI
GARY + HEIDI / EDMONTON TO INUVIK / '98.
At their request, I took the picture of a family of Swiss tourists putting up their own
homemade we-were-here sign, complete with Swiss flag, the grandfather standing on a
ladder and his granddaughter sitting on his shoulders, whaling away with what looked like
a brand-new hammer specially bought for the purpose.
Behind the Signpost Forest the Alaska Highway Interpretive Centre houses an exhibit
on the construction of the Alaska Highway during eight fraught months in 1942. One re-
cruiting sign read “This is no picnic” and they weren't kidding. Spurred by the attack on
Pearl Harbor, soldiers and contractors worked 24-seven, ate lousy food and slept seven to
a tent, although it sounds like the mud and the bugs were the worst of it. After the war,
Canada paid the US $77 million for it, approximately half the cost of construction, but the
Canadian engineers who inherited its care and feeding called it a nightmare.
It was then. It's not now. Watson Lake to Whitehorse is by far the easiest section of
road we've driven yet, mostly wide, unpatched pavement with generous shoulders and
long straight stretches where cruise control is a must.
A 284-mile day, ending in Whitehorse, the bright, bustling provincial capital of the
Yukon, home to two-thirds of its population, named for what their rapids looked like, and
the beginning of the gold dust trail.
