Yukon Driving Conditions

I can't recall if I have written much about this so far, but the driving conditions are something to speak of. To begin, the roads are quite straight and wide, nice surface, only the occasional crumple in the road, very unlike the roads in Cape Breton that I left behind. The wind regally through the mountains, and are for the most part, fairly pleasant to drive on. The one thing I don't particularly understand is the lack of guardrails. I don't quite get it...the roads are built up quite high because of the frost we get, and of course, the potential for gullies and ravines is pretty high, but yet here are these very nice roads winding through the mountains without a guardrail in sight. You look down to the right as you drive and thank your lucky stars you are able to stay on the road. But what about when you can't stay on the road, or if there is an accident...it's a hell of a drop! The only guardrail I've seen is a concrete edging on the bend in the road before the Takhini river. Of course, I haven't been all over yet, so will reserve judgment just yet, I suppose, however I have heard from some others that there are generally not guardrails anywhere. WTF?

One more road condition to note is that they don't use salt on the roads when they're slippery, and instead use sand, only they don't sift it too closely and most every day I drive home, another rock comes flying through the air, and my car ducks to avoid it, heh heh. Of course, the sand works fairly well in the frigid temperatures, however when it warms up, it makes a hell of a mess and my car is covered in mud and dirt. As well, the roads are covered in dirt and you can't see any dividing lines, passing lanes, turn lanes, etc. It's pretty much up to guess.

So there you have it...while the smooth straight roads permit high speed, I have not been able to drive my usual pedal to the metal because I'm terrified of the lack of guardrails, and there always seems to be a pick-up truck in front of me bumbling along at about 20-30km/hr below the speed limit. I guess I'm safe from speeding ticket for the most part...heh heh...