July 28,2014
Morning temperature was 43 degrees and partly cloudy. The beginning of our journey back to
Alabama. The day became more and more
sunny and ended with gorgeous blue skies and temps in the 60s.
First things first, we went to 3 Bears grocery store and
bought pastries for breakfast.
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| Almost didn't get this picture in time |
We
visited some other 3 Bears in other parts of Alaska, but really didn't care
much for them. We liked this one in Tok
when we were here in May, so just had to stop back on our way out of the main
portion of Alaska. We had to fuel up and
fill our water tank this morning before leaving. Fuel will just get more and more expensive
now until we get back to the lower 48.
This morning it was $4.659 for diesel.
We will then fill again in Haines, AK.
Canada is not unusual to be well over 5.00 per gallon although it is
sold by the liter and we have to convert to know what we are really
paying. Anyway, we buy as little as
possible in Canada.
The drive today is a new one for us since we took the Top of
the World Highway into Alaska. We had
been told early in the season that Alaska Highway from Tok, Alaska to Burwash
Landing, Yukon Territory was in bad shape but were hopeful they had time to
make improvements by now. However, when
we called the campground to check on availability for a lakeside site this
morning, the last thing she said was “Just take it slow. You are going to have a long day and we will
see you whenever you get here.” We were
afraid we knew what that meant. And our
fears were right on target. The road was
awful! They are working on huge sections
and you have to wait for pilot cars to go through areas where they have the
road totally torn out. Long sections are
dirt, gravel, and rock. And then there are
the frost heaves that have not been repaired at all, and loose stone in areas
where they have worked at repairing frost heaves. Top of the World highway was bad in May. It was really bad. But this today was never ending bad. The GPS told us it would take about 5.5 hours
to make the drive so we figured on 6 in Fred, but with all the delays and the
long stretches where we drove 15mph, it took 8 hours to drive it. We didn't even stop for lunch. We fixed sandwiches while we were waiting on
a pilot car and ate them before we got to move.
We did stop several times to walk Scout and stretch our legs. This stretch of highway also reminded us of
the Dalton Highway to the Arctic because the pilot car had a flat tire like
they kept having on that road. I wonder
how many tires they go through on these awful roads – one of the reasons we
drive very slowly on the really bad sections.
Anyway, we are told that from here on the road is in much better
condition. We sure do hope so.
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| Not a happy camper |
In spite of the horrible road, we saw beautiful scenery
today. There are many lakes in this
section of the drive and they are so pretty.
We also are back into the area of higher mountains so we again have snow
capped peaks! They are so pretty and so
what you expect in the North. There were
also areas of nice healthy forest and then areas of permafrost where the
trees were so puny they made us laugh.
In those areas of permafrost (and frost heaves) the power poles also
suffered. They were leaning all different
directions. We don't know how they keep
the lines up with the poles like that.
They looked like a cartoon.
We stopped at the Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge Visitors
Center to stretch our legs and take a little hike. Much of the land we drove through early in
the day was part of this refuge. The
people at the center insisted we take our bear spray on the hike as they have
been seeing bears. Of course we saw
none. We remembered this place from our
previous trip.
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| The only wildlife we saw on the trail |
We had to cross back into Canada today and again the
crossing was fast and efficient. We were
asked four questions. Destination? Kluane Lake today, then Haines. Do we have any weapons or firearms? No. Do
we have over $10,000.00 in cash with us? No, (I wish!) Will we be leaving anything in Canada?
No. (other than some of our money). We were told to have a good day and a good
trip. That was it. Nice!
Interesting to us was the fact that the Canadian Port of Entry (customs)
was actually about 20 miles into Canada at Beaver Creek, while the US Port of
Entry was at the US border. There was
sort of a 20 miles no man's land the first 20 miles in Canada. Guess it doesn't matter because you can only
go straight down that one road. There
were no roads intersecting the Alaska Highway in that 20 miles so you can
continue to Canada or turn around and go back into the US.
We had to stop and do the usual photos at the international
border. We stopped at this same spot in
2006.
After crossing the border we were
in Beaver Creek. We spent the night here
at the West Mark Inn in 2006. This is
the place our friend Ralph got so sick with the GI bug that was going around that he had
to stay there when we all left the next morning. Fortunately, Holland American had another bus
that picked him up the next day so he could join us before we got on the
ship. We thought he might like to see
what it looks like today. It is closed
and we were told they were going to make it an RV park but today it just looked
closed and boarded up.
Tonight we are sitting Fred in looking out onto beautiful,
blue, Kluane Lake. It is surrounded by mountains,
some of them snow capped.
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| View out our front window |
The campground does have WIFI, but it is SLOW satellite so it takes a long time to post the blog and we have to use small pictures. They also said there was a grizzly in camp
this morning so we can leave nothing outside and all garbage has to stay in the
rig and leave with us to be deposited in cans in town. We are in Canada so we are not using our
phones at all. We hope tomorrow is nice
and sunny because we would love to inflate the boat and get out on the
lake. We plan to stay here tomorrow
night so we can play all day tomorrow and then head to Haines. We will let you know what we do – when we
have connectivity.
For RVers:
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| Young's Chevron in Tok allows overnight parking with fuel purchase. There is also a dump station here. |
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