Watson Lake & the Sign Post Forest
We arrived at the Watson Lake Tags Gas Station & RV Park at 11:15. We needed gas in the RV, so Mike pumped gas while I went inside the store to register. Since we're also camping here for the night, we got a 2¢ a liter discount on our gas purchase. We got 197.224 liters at $1.349 CAD (after discount price) a liter ($266.06 CAD) which works out to 52.12 gallons at $5.159 a gallon $268.88 US).
Our campsite cost $26.25 CAD ($26.52 US) for the night. Since we weren't assigned a specific campsite, we could just pick one & hook up. We chose site #8. We have full hook-ups with 30 amp electric and wi-fi. The "campground" is actually a large parking lot behind the convenience store and gas station.
After setting up the RV and eating lunch, we walked across the street to the Sign Post Forest. The Sign Post Forest was started by U.S. Army G.I. Carl K. Lindley, who was working on the Alaska Highway with the 341st Engineers. He was from Danville, IL and homesick, so he erected a sign pointing the way home and showing the mileage to his hometown. Since then others have visited and hung signs here, so that there are now over 70,000 signs in the Sign Post Forest.
Several years ago in an antique store we had bought a vehicle registration tag from Camp Rucker which dates from 1942-1955 when the name was changed to Fort Rucker. When we were planning this trip to Alaska, Mike said he had the perfect sign to put up at Watson Lake - the one from Camp Rucker.
We found a post to hang our sign on and Mike used his portable drill to attach it.
There are so many signs here that it is impossible to read them all.
We did find some signs from familiar places.
We stopped in at the Watson Lake Visitor Center to buy post cards of the Sign Post Forest, but they didn't have any. They said that the campground office should have some post cards, but they didn't have any. We took Tinker back to the RV and then walked down to Hougen's Department Store and we found post cards there. We bought a Pepsi at the coffee shop next door and sat outside to write out our post cards.
We've had more RVs come in here at the campground to spend the night and it looks like we might have some rain tonight. Since we don't have any cable here, we'll be watching movies on DVD tonight.
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