John: We headed out towards Teslin Lake. The idea was to find somewhere to try and fish at... Although the fishing was supposed to be great there, we really needed a boat to do it. So we decided to kiss it off and head on down the road. We got to Watson Lake. At the visitors center is where “the sign forest” is... the Sign Forest is poles & poles of signs to people’s home towns. It all started 50 years ago when they were first building the Alaska Highway. One of the workers was lonesome for home, so he made himself a sign of his hometown with the number of miles to his hometown and stuck it on a post. Then other workers started adding to it... and now there’s tens of thousands of signs with the name of people's home towns on them. Soooooo, not to feel left out, I searched for a piece of wood to make a sign... I found an old piece of 1x4... I cut it in half, sanded it, and wrote our sign with a permanent marker I brought along. I put Conifer, CO across the top and we all signed the bottom... also put the date on it. The hardest part was finding a vacant spot to hang it up. In our search for a spot, Karen spied another Conifer, Colo sign!! I couldn't believe it... I’ll have to call “Nelson” when we get back and tell them we saw their sign. Well, we found a spot and I nailed it up there... we got someone to take our family portrait by “our sign”... so now there’s tens of thousands and one signs there now. What a trip!! (People sure go crazy over their hometowns... me too!!) It was getting late now, we were all starving, so we gassed up the truck and found a nice restaurant across the street. We got the buffets for 11.95, all you can eat, the kids wanted salads - the buffets were salads, chicken, spaghetti, and roast beef, and cake. We stuffed ourselves. I also bought license plates from the Yukon and Northwest Territories (shaped like a bear) The camping around here didn't turn us on, so seeing as we were half way recharged, decided to hit the road. We figured we would just find a “pull out” (free-be) somewhere in the middle of nowhere... but, when we were getting tired, we were in the middle of a burnt out forest from the second largest forest fire of 1982 in the Yukon... so we kept on truckin'. The road was terrible for around 150 miles (all gravel)... so it was slow going. One stretch of road had new loose gravel on it, but was so loose, that big semi trucks going the other way made deep ruts in the road. After a while somebody called me up on the CB and it was a trucker going our way who was behind me. He must’ve wanted to talk to someone, so when I answered him back, we talked quite a bit... (which was helpful, as he knew the road conditions very good)... We kind of decided to keep on going until we got to the Liard River Hot Springs Campground. We pulled in at around 10:30 PM. The campground was full (no surprise), so we just camped in a wide spot by the road right in front of the campground... (so did 12-15 other campers). Slept in a coma all night.). We drive 402 miles despite the crappy road... and more mud on the truck. We got another bird.
ODOM: 29120
Notes: After four weeks, we have spent a total of $2185 cash, plus $455 on gas credit cards... for a grand total spent of $2639. The total miles driven = 5258.
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| Kari & Susan |
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| L & E Nelson - Conifer, CO |
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| Karen, Susan, John & Kari under the Puskas family sign. |
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| Closeup of the Puskas family sign. |
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| Kari & Susan under the Puskas family sign. |
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