Road Trip: Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Arctic Drive, Part I

But back to the highway. In this part of Alberta our big Sprinter vans often seemed dwarfed by the heavy trucks with which we were sharing the road. This, of course, is oil country, and much of the traffic you encounter is oil industry related. Everyone’s in a hurry; there’s money to be made and just about every vehicle wears the livery of one energy-related company or another.

We were simply passing through, rubbing shoulders with the big boys, holding our own in speed if not in mass. But this is the way to British Columbia and the Yukon Territory, so we pointed ourselves to Whitecourt, headed west on Hwy 34 at Valleyview and jogged over to Grande Prairie, the latter at 55,000 residents representing the largest community north of Edmonton.

Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Arctic Drive. Click image to enlarge.

From what I could see, Grande Prairie may be the Big Smoke up there, but entering from our direction it looked like nothing more than an endless outdoor mall, with big-box stores of every name, type and size scattered randomly across the landscape as far as the eye could see. It was a monotonous and depressing vista, with no sense of place; just fast food, fast retail and economy hotels of no architectural merit. It was a great place to leave.

It took a while to get through all this, but eventually we reached the more pleasant communities of Beaverlodge and Hythe, situated between Grande Prairie and Dawson Creek, BC. While our destination on this first day was Fort St. John, Dawson Creek warranted a stop as this is where you’ll find Kilometre Zero of the Alaska Highway (also known as the Alcan, or Alaska-Canada Highway), which would form a large part of our journey.

Beaverlodge, by the way, is home to the Giant Beaver, and a fine-looking rodent it is. The size of a modest house, I doubt you’ll find a bigger beaver in Canada. You’ll also find Richard Smith’s Race Trac Gas in nearby Hythe. Mr. Smith cheerfully allowed our convoy personnel to use his facilities, talked tires and cars, checked out the Sprinters and was a fine and hospitable host even though we didn’t buy anything. “This is a small town,” he explained. “We’re just happy you stopped by to talk!”

Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Arctic Drive. Click image to enlarge.

We made Dawson Creek, British Columbia by nightfall and found not one, but two official markers for the beginning of the Alaska Highway: the old one and the new one. Both are located in places where you can’t stop (they’re at roadside or in the middle of an intersection, after all), so we photographed the old one, mainly because it’s easier to park nine Sprinters nearby. Furthermore, it’s the original marker, so it seemed more authentic.

The establishment of the Alaska Highway was quite an engineering feat, the route now being a “bucket list” drive for many people. Originally over 2,700 km long, rerouting (straightening) over the years has reduced its length by around 500 km to a still-impressive 2,232 km. Highway construction commenced in March 8, 1942 and ended — get this — just over eight months later on October 28. It was built by US Army Engineers as a response to potential Japanese threats to the North American west coast during World War 2. After the war, it was opened to the public in 1948, ownership of the road in Canada passing to the Canadian government thereafter.

Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Arctic Drive. Click image to enlarge.

From Dawson Creek it would be a 1,412 km drive to Whitehorse, Yukon, travelling along BC Highway 97, then Yukon Highway 1. The Alaska Highway officially ends at Delta Junction, AK, but we, however, wouldn’t quite cover its full length, changing direction at Tok, AK for the final leg to Anchorage.

From Dawson Creek it takes only an hour to reach Fort St. John, also known as the “Energetic” City,” where we would overnight. Entering the city after nightfall and leaving before sunrise, we really wouldn’t see anything of the place. However, it was the discovery of oil and gas in the region in 1961 — adding to the already vibrant lumber industry — that created the “Energetic” nickname, and energy-related companies and their heavy equipment again dominate the landscape. Like much of north-central Alberta, this part of British Columbia is not really a tourist destination, or at least, it seemed that way to me.

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