Our Northern Adventure – Part 1: Vancouver to Watson Lake

Our Northern Adventure – Part 1: Vancouver to Watson Lake

April/May 2026:

We left Vancouver City feeling like we were setting out for the North Pole! We were on a mission: drive up through Canada to Alaska, tour Alaska, cross back into Canada and drive up to the Arctic Ocean on the Dempster Highway, before heading south to be in Calgary for early August to fly home for Dave’s Mum’s 90th birthday. There was no time to hang around!

There are several routes north and we decided to take the westerly route – the Sea to Sky Highway (Hwy 99) to Cache Creek and then joining the Cariboo Highway (Hwy 97) to Prince George. From there we went west on the Yellowhead Highway (Highway 16) to the Cassier Highway (Highway 37) taking us to Watson Lake. A journey of 2,210km.

The Sea to Sky Highway runs from Vancouver, along the banks of Howe Sound before climbing up to the Olympic town of Whistler and then on to to Cache Creek. We stopped at Squamish (love that name!) for some shopping on the way to Whistler and then for a hike to the Whistler Train Wreck. Here, the bear warning signs felt real, there being a pile of very fresh bear poo right next to the sign. We kept our bear spray close to hand. The wreck is from 1956 where a freight train came off the rails and some of the railcars were pushed aside and into the woods rather than recovered. It has since become a place for graffiti art and (therefore) a tourist attraction.

We felt that Whistler was very artificial. It was, after all, a purpose built town to facilitate the 2010 Winter Olympics. It’s probably a great place to stay in the winter for a skiing holiday – and leave afterwards. We had a quick look around and moved on.

We stopped for the night at a lovely camp spot next to Duffy Lake. It was a perfect evening and Dave tried out his fishing rod for the first time. He caught two trout but, unfortunately, they were not big enough for the grill. It was a long drive, over the next three days, to Prince George, but we did stop of at Lillooet for a quick look around at this fairly sparse town and briefly at the Mile 108 Heritage Site.

We didn’t hang around in Price George for long, but we did visit the Cottonwood Island Park which was a nice walk, especially as a local artist has chiselled images of faces and animals into the bark of the cotton wood trees and we had fun looking for them.

We then set out on the Yellowhead Highway travelling west. We drove solidly for the next few days, stopping at Fraser Lake to camp at a pretty campsite we had to ourselves, Moricetown to look at the Witset Canyon, Hazelton to peruse the small but expensive farmer’s market, Hagwilget Canyon Bridge and K’san Historical Village and Museum.

We turned north onto the Cassiar Highway at Kitwanga before taking a side trip down the R37A to Stewart and briefly into the USA for an hour to visit Hyder. This road was very scenic with frozen lakes and we spotted our first grizzly bear and cub. After rejoining the Cassiar north, we soon spotted our first black bear before stopping to camp next to Mehan Lake. This was good, we thought – the start of a lot of bear viewings!

The next day we drove 497km to Watson Lake, stopping occasionally for photos and lunch. The road was very scenic with a backdrop of frozen lakes and snow covered mountains. The kilometres passed quickly.

Watson Lake really has only one notable attribute: Signpost Forest. It all started in 1942, when a homesick GI working on the Alaska Highway project, made a sign for his home town. Since then, thousands of travellers from all over the world have left their mark here in the form of a sign. And we did too! Dave fabricated an aluminium post to which he attached a spare number plate and a sign with our names. Dave then bolted our sign to a tractor in the forest!