My 2011 Ford Fiesta: From In-Town Car to Yukon Road Trip Vehicle

Note: My daughter’s drive to Yellowknife last month with a friend reminded me of a scenic trip I took two years ago, and I started typing it into a post. It took me so long to finish the story that the Fiesta is now approaching Curbside Classic status itself. So, let’s travel back to 2024, when I first started typing this.

One of my favourite children was lucky enough to get herself a summer co-op engineering position in Whitehorse Yukon.   A bit of a family tradition to go work in the land of the midnight sun as I had done and my parents before me.  We keep a spare car for such events so the old 2011 Fiesta was set for a big adventure.  It spent so much of its life in 2-10 km intervals as our in-town car that a 2500 km trip would be good for it. And it had been a reliable little thing all its life as it did not have the dreaded PowerShift, just a normal 5 speed with a clutch and a gear lever.

Many travellers, when heading North do a lot of prep work to be ready for the trip through such a remote and inhospitable areas; there are long stretches without services, particularly on the Cassiar Highway. The Alaska Highway is nowhere near as remote as it once was but services are a long ways apart, so a car should be in tip top condition for the trip and being well outfitted is probably a worthy idea. There are many well prepped rigs adorned with all level of overland prep to see on that road, ready to take on whatever the North throws at them. However,  I had already had a very busy  3000 km month fetching offspring from university and bringing home a classic sled, so the sum total of preparations for us involved getting an oil change and making sure the USB stick had a music playlist that would last for many days as there are long stretches without radio.

We wedged everything into the car and set off.  There are a few different routes possible but early season fires near Fort Nelson ruled that direction out, plus we were going to convoy up with another co-op student who we would meet along the way who was coming from Victoria, so it made sense to go through Dease Lake up the Cassiar Highway.

The Icefields Parkway to Jasper had a fresh snow overnight and I had thoughtfully taken off the winter tires in favour of some well worn all seasons, but we had no issues.  Having a lot less traffic than in tourist season made for a pleasant trip.

Despite the cliché nature of Banff and Jasper National Parks, they are quite beautiful places.

It was early in May so the hordes of travellers had not arrived.  Only had a few buses to follow.

I recreated a picture taken a lifetime ago when I was working in the Robson Valley and staying in Valemount.

As buzzy as the Fiesta was it was a lot quieter than the old Yellow Toyota.

It was good to revisit the places I had worked over the years.  I have said at least three times that I am never going farther North than Kamloops ever again, but inevitably I keep finding myself in the northern half of the province.  Between McBride and Prince George is a nice drive with very little traffic. A bear every 5 minutes or so though.

We stayed on the outskirts of the city of Prince George for our first night.  It’s generally a nice city in a good location but leaving a car full of stuff anywhere near the downtown at night was a risk I wasn’t taking.  Though dinner with a friend in the city core actually made me think it wasn’t as crime ridden as it was 20 years ago when I last worked there.

The next day we had to meet the other student out in Smithers.  It’s a nice drive through some towns that are seeing the effects of a collapsing forest industry.  Once we met the other student in her Dad’s F-150, we headed out for Highway 37, the Cassiar Highway.

Until the turn off of Highway 16 the trip is through civilization with gas stations and stores.  I don’t think I consciously took a picture of a C3 Corvette but there it is on a trailer.

This Cassiar is a pretty remote part of the province.  Which really doesn’t open for business until mid May.  The Fiesta was only using 5 litres per 100 km which was really fortunate as there are not many gas stations at that time of year and the one at Meziadin Junction had no gasoline, only diesel.  Our destination that night was Dease Lake which would have fuel.

The trip was full of scenery as winter was coming to an end.

We stopped to take pictures sometimes.  Get too involved in documenting the trip though and you never get anywhere.

After a pretty long day, we got to our accommodation in Dease Lake and the welcome sight of an unmanned fuel station.

While Dease Lake had fuel, it did not have food of any kind to purchase.  And in a planning fail, we didn’t have much either other than a few granola bars.  A  hotel coffee maker heated water for a Cup of Soup we found in our luggage which got us through until morning. I don’t have that refined a palate, but I do feel confident Lipton can probably hold off on introducing Chicken Noodle Soup avec Cafe to their instant soup collection. However my last time on the Cassiar in 2019 there were spree killers on the loose who we actually remember seeing, plus the most miserable camping experience of my life at Tatoga Resort, so going without food for 12 hours was fine by comparison.

Next morning we were heading for Whitehorse.   This is also a pretty part of the Province.  We stopped at Jade City, as featured on the reality TV show Jade Fever, to grab some jade. Later that day a moratorium on jade mining in the Cassiar was announced. Not sure what that means for the future of that mine.  Here is a classic parked out front.  That’s actually a picture I took in 2019 in the same spot but any chance to take a picture of an A100 truck should be capitalized on.

Just for fun I will also cheat with this 2019 picture of an unexpected survivor I also saw in the Yukon.

You can stand on the highway and nothing will hit you. We once went 45 minutes without seeing a single vehicle.

One of those monster fires that happen in the north had sent a very large area back a few steps in the ecological cycle.

It was good to stop in a store in Watson Lake to get actual food after going without for half a day.

We revisited and updated our 2019 sign at the signpost village.

Every year they add a few more rows.

Not that there is much to stop for after Watson Lake but anything there was either closed for the season or permanently, I guess because the road is so good now and cars have decent fuel range. Every time I go north, I see more and more of these abandoned businesses.

There is some scenery along the way from Watson Lake to Whitehorse.   A lot of it looks the same after a while.  So I didn’t take a single picture, it seems.

We got to Whitehorse on Day 3.  Fires had knocked out cell service for the entire north so things were a bit strange, but I spent my 4 days there walking around.    A lot of Whitehorse looks like this, new corporate and government buildings mixed in with older ones.

The Paddlewheeler was being refurbished so I didn’t tour it.

The ice had come off the river and it was a pleasant place to walk.

I shot some pictures of cars.   This Mercedes was awesome.

This Tacoma is a long way from home, and sporting the obligatory twisted and overloaded hitch carrier that seems to be one of the number one souvenirs of the Alaska Highway.

LeTourneau LCC1 Sno Train at the transport museum, which was built to haul DEW line components in 1956.

I would have loved to see it in action.

DC3 on a stick.

As usual on my Northern trips there was a fair complement of world travellers having an adventure.

Which make a change from the hordes of rental motorhomes and vans that hit the road in the summer.

Tires looked really small to me on the Global Citizen.

The type of Ford truck my dad had when I was 5. Happily doing display duty outside a Ford Dealership.

I am sure it had some decent adventures in its day.

Mandatory Mopar pic of the type of Polara I drove on my first day with my learner’s license.

Maybe the Polara owner can go here for parts.

No reason for this Freelander not to be here, I guess.  My theory is that with nowhere to go, vehicles spend most of their life in the city.

Assuming it came up under its own power, this would have been one heck of a ride.

And a bit of British yard art.

These Civics are pretty thin on the ground now down here.

One thing Yukon cars have is at least one block heater and maybe even a battery heater. Multiple plugs are common.

These are also not common where I live anymore  so interesting seeing one so far north.  Also has the multiple plug setup.

Despite similarity with the nearly extinct S-Blazer, I still see Astro campers fairly often.

And then I flew home.    Three and a half months later, I flew back into Whitehorse late at night and we set off early the next morning   This time we were committed to covering distance, so this was only a one stop trip.  I did stop to snap a picture of some bison near Liard Hot Springs.

The bears were getting a bit monotonous but I took a picture of this family.

Probably an interesting museum which I didn’t stop at with an old Binder out front.

This time we followed the Alaska Highway out to Fort St. John and stopped for the night.  Construction at the Site C, now John Horgan, Dam was wrapping up. There was lots of accommodation to be had.

Alberta is one of the prettiest places on earth in my opinion.  At least the very western part along the Rockies.  Sadly a lot of Alberta is not along the Rockies. This is the part we traversed for quite a long time.  I am sure there were pictures I could have taken as there were cool old farm trucks everywhere but even letting off the gas, let alone stopping, to take a picture would just extend the day even more.  But as determined as I was about forward progress I did need a picture of this oversized beaver.

As we got near the rocks the scenery became fantastic.  Fantastic scenery also meant I was close to home.

We arrived  home, unloaded the car, and it got ready for its next cross province trip down to Victoria for the winter.

It’s even been two months since I set out to finish this story now.   The Fiesta is now 15 years old and has certainly had some adventures.  It spent this winter in Vancouver traffic at another co-op job.  Now it’s back home making its little trips to work.   A lot of deferred maintenance was catching up to it.  A very noisy wheel bearing required the replacement of the knuckle which is out of production for the 2011 to 2014 now.  I spent some wrenching time getting all that sorted out and its condition is on the upswing.  And on another positive note one of its operators is learning mechanics on it and assisted on changing out a sway bar link the other day.

And in two months it will surely be somewhere else having some new adventure, likely in Victoria which is a pretty gentle place for a car to live.  I actually doubt it has had its last road trip.