Alaska Highway - Watson Lake to Teslin [260620]

(Posted 260717) - Saturday was supposed to be a "travel day with some fun stops along the way", but sort of ended up being more of a "travel day with a trio of disappointments" instead.  But that's the way "life on the road" is sometimes!

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Our night behind the Sign Post Forest was reasonably quiet, and by the time we got up at 8 a.m. Saturday morning a large number of our neighbors had already hit the road.  We did our morning routine, and then Tom decided to pull out our telescoping ladder and clean the solar panels on our roof - reasoning that they must be pretty dirty by now, given how dirty the rest of the van has been getting.  However, they - and the rest of the roof in general - actually ended up being relatively clean; we're not sure whether its because the roof is high enough off the road that it doesn't pick up the dirty road spray like the rest of the van does, or the rain just does a better job of washing the horizontal surfaces off afterwards than it does the vertical ones.  (But Tom cleaned the panels anyway, since he was already up there.)

We said good-bye to the Sign Post Forest and Watson Lake around 9:15 and resumed our journey westward.  Around an hour and a half later, we started being able to see snowy mountains in the distance.

Unfortunately, as Christine was trying to take photos along our drive with both the iPhone and the Nikon, it quickly became apparent that the new/used 70-300mm lens was now completely unable to focus along it's entire zoom range, and was completely useless 😢.

At the next Rest Area, Tom was unhappy with how - once again - trees had been allowed to grow to block the view.

He also thought it'd be nice to get both the mountains and the T42 in a single shot.  He decided to kill two birds with one stone, and crossed the highway and climbed a bit up the hill on the opposite side . . . 

. . . to frame the shots he wanted.

Our first planned/official stop for the day was 131 km west of Watson Lake at Rancheria Falls, with the intent to hike the trail to the falls.  That plan ended up being a bust, though:  when we arrived the trail was taped off with a sign saying that the trail was closed.  A worker who came by to empty the trash cans told us that part of the boardwalk was broken.

While en route, though, it had occurred to us that since we had purchased our new/used 70-300mm lens so close to leaving for Alaska, we might actually still be within it's return window; a quick check showed that we had ordered it exactly 30 days ago.  With our falls hike now not happening, we instead set up our Starlink to double-check exactly what Adorama's return policy is - which is easier said than done.  After reading a number of sites - including several different areas of Adorama's own website, which seemed to contradict each other - the only thing that was certain was that their return policy for "new" items was different than it was for "used" items.  We found a downloadable form that said that for used items you don't have to get pre-authorization or an RMA number:  you just fill out the form and return it with your item.  But you also have to indicate what you want done in response, with options being get a refund or have the item repaired.  When we ordered it originally, there were only 3 of the used lenses available and none were available now - so with replacement not really an option, repair seemed like a good idea.  But it was unclear what the timeframe on the repair would be, nor what would happen if the item was deemed "unrepairable".  It seemed like we needed to talk to someone in Customer Service, but Saturday happened to be the one day of the week that Adorama Customer Service is closed - and there were indications in some parts of the Adorama site that returns for used items had to be submitted within 30 days of order placement (which today was the last day of).  Waiting until tomorrow to try to get a live person in Customer Service seemed risky - but so did trying to rush a return using a sketchy form and options we didn't understand (not that we were anywhere near somewhere we could ship an item from anyway).  We decided to just wait and try to call Customer Service tomorrow morning.

Another 7.4 km west brought us to the Continental Divide Rest Area.  Although the Continental Divide is sort of interesting from a geographic standpoint, the rest area itself was pretty non-descript and boring, having nothing to see other than a few well-weathered signs.

The Nisutlin Bay Bridge Overlook Rest Stop (120 km W) was yet another example of a overlook/viewpoint that could benefit from some judicious pruning.  The trees had grown to completely block the view from most vantage points, although there was a single rock by the parking lot that you could stand on to get a bit of elevation, and by raising your phone/camera high above your head you could snap a photo of most of the bay and bridge.  Not great, if you wanted to see the "longest bridge on the entire Alaska Highway" (584 meters / 1917 feet) before driving across it!

Another 6.2 km west brought us to the Teslin Tlingit Heritage Centre - and our second disappointment of the day, because despite the Teslin Tlingit Council's Webpage claiming that during May - September the center is open 8:30am - 5:00pm seven days a week the center was closed up tight with no signs explaining why.  (We suspect, though, that it may have been because National Indigenous Peoples Day in Canada is June 21, and the folks may have decided to just take the entire weekend off; a note to that effect on the website and/or the door would have been nice, though!)

We took photos of the Clan poles in the parking lot, which represent the Five Clans (Raven, Frog, Wolf, Beaver, and Eagle) . . .

. . . and then had lunch in the parking lot.  While we ate, about a half dozen other visitors came, found the door locked, and left again - although we noticed some of them also spent an inordinate amount of time walking around the back of the building first.  Intrigued, we decided to check out the rear ourselves.  The centre apparently sits on the shores of Teslin Lake, and has some pretty gorgeous views of the mountains on the far side (which according to Google image search plus AI are officially named "Dawson Peaks" but are also known locally as "The Three Aces" - if you trust the AI 😉) from its back lawn.

Another 47 km NW brought us to our stopping place for the night:  the Canol Road Rest Area.  Most folks who stop here probably come to read the signs about the nearby Teslin River Bridge (the second highest on the Alaska Highway), Canol Road, or the ill-conceived Canol Pipeline . . .

. . . or maybe to see the pseudo-museum of automobile carcasses abandoned after the Canol Road project.

But our interest in this particular rest area were from the iOverlander reviews that reported that it had an unprotected high-speed Starlink that you could sign in to while boondocking here.  We saw the physical Starlink mounted to a pole by the EV chargers (presumably for use by them) and could see the unprotected/default SSID from it, but connecting to it produced download speeds of slightly under 1 Mbps and upload speeds of 0.5 Mbps - only marginally faster than our own Starlink in Stand-by mode:  disappointment #3 of the day.

Given that two of our planned activities (the falls hike and the Heritage Centre visit) for the day had fallen through, it was still pretty early (around 3:30 p.m.) at this point.  We happened to notice that Google Maps seemed to show that there was a road that led down to the Teslin River - and presumably a view of the Teslin River Bridge.  Having nothing better do, we decided to take a little hike down to the river.

Well as it turns out, the "road" that Google Maps had in its database must've been some really old dirt road, because the land seems to have taken it back.  The further we hiked along it, the more overgrown it became - until we got to the point that it wasn't even recognizable any more.  (It also occurred to us that it was an excellent place to accidentally run into a bear - and we once again had left our bear spray in the van 🤦.)

We eventually reached a point where we were wading through bushes, and not tracking along the curve of the "road" on the map at all any more (either because we really weren't on it, or because the thick tree cover was preventing an accurate GPS location).  We decided to abandon the path and just hang a hard left, to see if we could find the road that we were supposed to intersect faster.  Our bushwhacking paid off, and the "other road" ended up being a real live paved one.  Once out of the tree canopy and on the pavement, we tracked against the map again and were able to find our way down to the river.  At the end of the road were some apparent "campsites" and a small boat launch, from which we could see the river and the bridge up above.

Unfortunately it was now about 74 degrees out, and the mosquito community had discovered that Tom was in the area.  We made our way back to the T42 (staying on the paved road the entire way back) as quickly as possible.

Dinner that evening was the corn, black bean, cheese, and guacamole on fresh tortilla dish again.  After dinner we journaled, trip planned, and began working on blog post #9 until bedtime around 11:45.

Tomorrow we'd be "retracing some of our steps" from 2011.