This is Watson Lake Part 1 because it’s one of a few places on my route where I will have to backtrack and visit a second time. So stay tuned for Part 2: The Return Journey!!
After a nearly 7 hour drive from Fort Nelson and seeing a ton of bears, bighorn sheep, the odd elk/caribou and including a stop in Coal River, BC, land of the most expensive gas at 191.9, I arrived at Watson Lake, population around 790 as of 2016 as per Google. Compared to other places I visited in NWT, it seemed to me like Watson Lake would be big enough for a higher population, but maybe it’s all the tourists passing through that make it seem larger, who knows!
And well. The big deal here is the Sign Post Forest. It’s pretty hard to miss, the Alaska Highway takes you past it as it goes through the town.
Over 55,000 signs as of 2004 according to the welcome sign! These few pictures I’ve got here are just a tiny snippet of the amount of signs displayed in this forest. I attempted to capture signs of some familiar places, and some not so familiar 😛
These CLAYTON – SÄVAR signs below may have had something to do with a geocache! This was a super fun one, good thing I had GPS coordinates to point me to the signs otherwise it would have been like looking for a ‘needle in a haystack’! Well maybe not quite, but it would have taken a long time to find the signs I think, with the amount to search through!
After the sign post fun, I found an interesting little hotel to stay at, Andrea’s. There are no big name hotel chains or any store franchises here. Andrea’s was nice and clean with friendly staff, and I give it an A+ rating on the coffee station!! 4 Keurig pods and none of them decaf!! Best offering yet. Other places I’ve stayed at so far had at most 2 coffee packets, with some places only offering one, what the heck! Had breakfast at the restaurant, a ham & cheese omelet with hash browns and toast for $13. Not bad, not bad. And more coffee of course.
