TOK (NO PICTURES, RAINING AGAIN)

TOK, ALASKA

No matter where you’re driving to in Alaska, you will go thru Tok twice. Look at a map. It’s a crossroads. We needed to get fuel there, and look up a medical clinic for Eloise. Seems like she developed a urinary infection. She was hurting when we arrived at the clinic, but they said they simply couldn’t work her in to see the Dr. The office staff called to the next clinic down the road, the parent clinic at Delta Junction, and was able to get her an appointment there for 6PM. We got there with lots of time to spare…about 3 hours. The advantage of having Gertie with us at all times is that you can be comfortable no matter what. We waited and she was seen promptly. Later, the culture revealed E Coli. They gave her Cipro, 3 days worth and when they called yesterday with the results of the culture, Cipro was the drug of choice. It seems to have done the job. The unfortunate part is that we didn’t take the road up to Eagle that we had planned on and since it was raining by the time we got to Tok we didn’t see anything there or on into Delta Jct. That’s okay, maybe on the second visit to Tok we can see it and maybe even work in a trip to Eagle.

CHICKEN, AK

CHICKEN, ALASKA

The first place we came to in the US was Chicken. Not much of a place. We couldn’t see much about it that we were interested in. There was a dredge tour, but we’d seen the bigger one in Dawson. If you have little ones with you, they might enjoy panning for gold. We drove thru, drove out. Be sure to note in the picture, the names on the outhouses.

ALASKA!

ALASKA!

Crossing back into America was an easy thing. Couple of questions about where our home was…I got it right, quicker this second time around. “Welcome home” he said and waived us through. There had only been one car ahead of us, little different from our crossing into Canada. It felt good to be back on US soil, and away from the exorbitant prices inflicted on Canadians! I thought that until my next fill-up. As soon as we hit the American road, it turned to crap. Pot holes and bumble-ruts like nowhere else except Arizona back roads. Did I wish I was back in Canada? Only sort of. It could be that it was too early in the repair season to have gotten to this highway. I’m giving them a break on that.

One of the sad parts of this section of the trip was the burned area. It seemed to reach all the way from Chicken to Tok. In some areas they have signs about what year the forest burned but there were none in this area so we don’t know the history.

Along about this time, Eloise decided that calling our rig, “the rig” sounded dumb, so she proposed calling it “Gertie”. I agree, and Gertie is as good a name as any…so all future references to our little house on the road will be as Gertie.

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This might be a good time to summarize gas issues getting to this point in our trip: Last fill-up was at Dawson City. Since leaving Benson, AZ we have burned up 460 gallons of gasoline. We have gotten as much as 10.2 MPG and as little as 6.3. We have averaged 8.65 mpg. We’ve paid as little as $3.45 (AZ) a gallon, and as much as $6.61 (Dawson City) a gallon for gas. We’ve used the generator 21.8 hours (estimated fuel use is ½ gallon per hour = 10.9 gal) which has been deducted before figuring the mpgs.

TOP OF THE WORLD HIGHWAY

TOP OF THE WORLD HIGHWAY

After debarking from the ferry we began to climb. I believe it said 8.7 miles of climb. Part way up was a golf course. You couldn’t see if from the road but the signs pointed the way. I can imagine you could lose a lot of balls on that course, right on the edge of the mountain overlooking Dawson City.

As we climbed we could look back and see Dawson City. Before long we decided it was time to find a spot for the night. One of the quietest nights I can remember but it was also June 21 (Solstice), the longest day of the year. We had quite a spot to see it and for once it was a beautifully clear sky with just enough clouds to make it really pretty. We took pictures at 12 midnight, later at around 1. I woke up at 4:20 and the sun had already risen and was behind the cloud. In the 4:20 picture, if you look to the left you can pick out the bush that the sun set behind. Really weird to be able to get both spots in one picture and I think if we had been on the other side of the road you probably would never have had a sunset/sunrise. The next day we followed the “Top of the World Highway” to the Canadian/US border. USA here we are!! The problem was, as soon as we crossed into Alaska the road conditions changed. We had really had great roads up until then. I’ll let Gary tell you about the US section.

Dawson City, Yukon

DAWSON CITY

Gas $6.61 a gallon!!!! Ouch.

We decided to have lunch at Sourdough Joe’s on the main drag. Halibut and chips is what we ordered, and was it ever terrific!

There is a walking/biking path around town alongside the Yukon River. The day we were there was a native celebration of some kind.

Outside the city limits is a dredge. It’s the largest one in North America. What a spectacle. The tour took us through all the inside operation. This thing is huge. The guide asked people to guess how many people it took to run such a huge piece of equipment. There were guesses of as many as 24 to as few as ten. The real figure was four. One watches the tailings on the conveyor belt, one is an oiler, one watches the buckets at the front, and one in the control room with the winches. The interesting thing about the dredge to me was that it was constantly moving right and left on a huge pivot. When the dredge needed to move forward, the pivot was raised, dredge moved, and the pivot run back into the center. It started out as steam driven, but wood was scarce, the riverboats consumed a cord of wood per hour and of course miners burned a lot for heat diminishing the supply of trees in previous years, forced them to find a new method. A hydro-electric plant was built for the main purpose of powering the dredge. A spin-off was that Dawson got electricity before most other parts of the country. I’ve included a picture of some of the gears, just wanted you to notice the people in the picture, it gives you an idea of the size of the gear.

Some locals in town told us it would be okay to spend the night in the parking lot of the dredge, and go to the tour in the AM. That’s what we did. It’s located up a pretty badly maintained dirt road about 12 miles in.

Just before you enter the town is Dome Road off to the right. Be sure to take it up to the top. Go in your toad or class-C. Not a road for a big-rig. At the top is a remarkable view of the whole area. We considered staying at the top that night, but decided it might be lover’s lane to the locals.

The only way to continue on to Alaska is to take the free ferry across the Yukon River and catch the Top of the World highway we’ll get to that next. We gather that the ferry landings are so crude is because the river must be continually shifting things around. It is just a crude dirt landing pad on both sides and they had a big pile of sandy soil that we figure they use to continually repair it.

We later spoke to people that had waited 3 hours for the ferry so we thought we should add that we didn’t. It was going the other direction as we pulled up in line but we were then on the first one leaving from our side of the river.

WHITEHORSE

Whitehorse was one of my favorite towns. We stayed 3 nights at Wallyworld. The first night we were there I counted 41 rigs doing the same as us! Right adjacent to the lot is a Shell station that has a free dump and good water. Gas price same as everywhere in town: $5.48 a gallon.

Probably Jim and Peg know about the Yukon Micro-Brewery. They give free tours at 2PM. After the tour we could sample up to 13 different kinds of beer. Norm, eat your heart out! We are not much into beer, but we did like a couple of their lighter brews. The dark ones are what the “real” drinkers seem to prefer. Anyway, that was fun and educational.

We celebrated our 32^nd wedding anniversary while here. I gave Eloise a brand new solenoid for the rig, and she gave me a rebuilt alternator. We needed the solenoid because we noticed that the coach battery wasn’t charging as we were driving, it was only being charged by the generator when we were running that. The solenoid seems to have taken care of that problem. Some miles back we began to notice a real high-pitched squeal from under the hood. I wasn’t sure whether it was from the alternator or the air pump. The NAPA where we got the solenoid had an attached garage. I asked that mechanic if he could please come over and analyze the source of the squeal. He was nice and brought his stethoscope with him. He listened to both things with it, and said they both were noisy. He wouldn’t say which one I should change. I had tried taking off the belt and turning them by hand, but couldn’t determine for sure. I chose the alternator and priced a few around town. Got one from Parts Plus and it has taken care of the worst of the screaming. Once the alternator was off, it was clear that it was the culprit.

Whitehorse is the current capitol of Yukon. It had been up in Dawson City. [Now having been to Dawson City, it is unbelievable it was ever there!] We asked around where the capitol building was, and we were told that there are buildings scattered around the city that perform the government functions. We’ve included a shot of a Canadian building we first thought must be the capitol, but it turned out to be on their federal level.

There are lots of interesting buildings there, but one that caught our eye was the log cabin high-rise. Four floors plus about half the basement were above ground.

The fish ladder on the edge of town was interesting, the visitor center was exceptionally nice with some RV parking, and there was a trolley that made the rounds of downtown. There was a lovely drive just south of town, Miles Canyon. We went to the lookout and took a few pictures, then went down to the Yukon River where there was a canyon that had been a real challenge to river boats in the early days. They have built a foot bridge across the canyon and you could hike on both sides. It is thoroughly enjoyable town. The downside was that their library didn’t have wireless.

The final picture is just along the way, the flowers were so beautiful and went on for miles and miles and miles.

TESLIN, JOHNSON MUSEUM AND MUKLUK ANNIES

This was a fun area. We took lots of pictures of the bridge. As we entered town we first came across a gift shop that advertised a free nature museum. That was quite a bargain. It was better than most that you would pay to see. Difficult to get pictures in there, but this seems to me should be a mandatory stop for about everybody.

At Mukluk Annies, another mandatory stop, if you have a meal in the restaurant, you are entitled to a free evening boat ride, permitted to stay in the no hook-up RV park, use the vehicle wash area, and dump and fill. Eloise took the boat ride and said it was great fun. Mukluk Charlie is a real character with a lot of stories. I chickened out because I thought a storm was coming in. It cleared off for the ride though, only rough in a few spots. We only stayed the one night. Beautiful view from the boondock area don’t you think?

WATSON LAKE (no pictures, raining)

Watson Lake is known as the “Gateway to the Yukon”. We saw the sign post forest (65,000 of them) at the Visitors Center. They had a great staff there that gave us Yukon Passports. You can get them stamped at attractions spread over the Yukon, then enter a contest. They also gave us another game card, you have to enter a number found at Visitor Centers and attractions. After you get 5 numbers on your card you can earn a book. They were offering two different ones. We had enough when we got to Whitehorse but they only had one of the books left. We will have to try again at another location for the other book. Tried again in Dawson City but their supply was out of the one we wanted also. Da!!!

Watson Lake is a very small town but progressive in that they had a small city park with a free dump station, no overnights allowed. We also went to their little theatre which showed in a sort of an omni-vision type theater (where the seats lean back and it is viewed on the domed ceiling), about the northern lights. Since we don’t know if we will get to see the real deal before we head south it was a fun thing to do. It also showed several short films about the area. Highly recommend stopping for the show. We didn’t spend the night there, we just got gas ($5.63 per gal), a few (very few) groceries, and dumped, then off up the road until we found a nice pull-out.

LIARD HOT SPRINGS

We had been advised to not miss the hot springs at Liard. The Provincial campground adjoins the springs. There is a charge of $5 a person per day to enter the springs, but if you stay in the campground for $18 (now $19), entrance is included. The campground is really nice with large sites that can hold the big rigs. Of course there are no hook-ups, no dump station, and their well was out, so there wasn’t any water either. They were providing drinking water on an as necessary basis until a new well can be drilled. The boardwalk out to the spring is ¼ mile. Once there, a dressing room is provided. We had worn our bathing suits. There are two pools, Alpha and Beta. Alpha is hotter than Beta, and it is where we preferred. Alpha has a pebble bottom, Beta was just, um, mucky, icky. We were glad we had taken the advice to stop. The first evening on our way to the hot springs we saw a moose, grazing as calm as could be. We, of course, had not brought our cameras and only guessed that this might be a normal thing around there. After that we took cameras with us each time but unfortunately, we never saw a sign of him again. A real high point of the trip to date.

A couple of interesting facts about the pools. They could be called thermal springs, hot springs or mineral springs. Thermal springs are more than 5 degrees celsius; hot springs are more than 32 degrees c and mineral springs have solids in a concentration of more than 1000 pp million. They are fed by thermal springs as well as cold water springs. If they weren’t fed by both you would not be able to get in at all. As you move around the pools you could find hot spots that you didn’t even want to stay in, then as you moved you would find cool spots. If it seemed too hot you could move the water around some and the hot and cold would blend to make it more comfortable.

We stayed two nights, mostly because E was having some muscle problems from all the constant riding. On our second day, coming back from the pool one of the guests told us to sit under the falls between the pools and let the water massage the back. E got up the next morning and went back to try it. I think it helped, as he said, it was like having a massage or like sitting in a hot tub where the jets can really hit you. We might have stayed longer if our holding tanks weren’t bursting! Never guessed the next dump station available would be Watson Lake so on we went.

I thought you might be interested in seeing what the plant life around there is. The blooms are parsnips and as you can see, lots of ferns. There were also some violets blooming.

MUNCHO LAKE, BC

I think the lake pictures will tell the story in this section. It was absolutely beautiful. The southern end of the lake was smooth, like glass, so the reflections were as clear as the actual mountains. It was 7.5 mile in length. It was a “ten”.

FORT NELSON

We got onto the Alaska Highway just west of Fort St John. Dawson Creek is the ‘real’ beginning of the highway, but we had taken the cut-off over to the dams. The road as far as Fort Nelson has been pretty darn good. A few patches of gravel where there had been chip & seal, but no big deal. Then, on one of those patches the front end seemed to want to shake itself apart. When we pulled over I was looking for loose lugs or a bad bearing. One of the spectators walked over and pointed out that there was a big chunk out of the left front tire. Sure enough, and the steel belt was starting to loosen. We put on the spare and went into Fort Nelson with the express intent of finding a replacement tire for a spare. We checked with both the tire companies and neither one had our size of tire, even in a used one. The guy at Kal-Tire phoned to places up our route and said nobody he talked to had one either. E and I talked it over, and we didn’t want to head up the road without any spare at all. One of the outfits said they had a rim in a 16” that would fit the lugs, and he could put on a used tire to go with it. We’ve done that. So if we have a flat on the rear, we’ll have to put one of the front tires onto the back, and put the odd tire on in front where it won’t do so much damage. Our hope is that in Fairbanks, AK we’ll be able to get the correct tire. We’re beginning to look a little like the Clampets’ with the second spare lashed to the roof. Going back a bit, it was our original spare that separated. One of the tires had a leaky valve stem and we had changed it for the spare down the road a ways. While in Fort Nelson we had the valve replaced and put it back on. We now when we were in Tucson. Nope, says the guys in charge. No good “here”! are back to the 6 original tires. The tire shop told us we could spend the night there but we chose to park on the access road near the Alaskan Highway. That way we could walk around town and went to dinner at a nice little pizza place.

Gary Sez: While we’re ranting about tires, here’s a tidbit I bet you didn’t know: Wal-Mart Canada doesn’t honor the tire warranties of its Southern relatives! We wanted our “lifetime” tire rebalance done on the front of the rig. We had paid extra for the privilege

Peace Canyon and Bennett Dams

These two dams are located about 20 minutes apart. We’ve seen a bunch of dams before, and weren’t really sure we wanted to see these. We did, and they were both really interesting. If any of you are going to be nearby, be SURE to stop.

The Peace Canyon Dam is the smaller one, but it used four really huge turbines made in Russia. Each weighed 220 tons. There is a film showing the difficulty of moving the turbines that was simply fascinating. They had to actually make some roads, create bridges and you should see them go thru the cordoned off towns. The rig to move each one was specially built, and had 120 tires under it! In 1922 the site was famous after the footprints of seven species of dinosaurs were discovered there. Think there must have been some outcry against putting in that dam! There is another dam in the planning stage, and there is a current protest.

The Bennett Dam uses 10 turbines, half the size of the Peace. The tour takes you from a short film, then load onto a bus and drive into the dam where we get off, don helmets and the guide narrates all the functions and explains how electricity is made. Our dam tours in the past were pretty superficial. This one is terrific. Once you’ve been about everywhere inside the dam, we were loaded back onto the bus and returned up to the visitor center. Pictures were prohibited, so all we have is the shot from across the dam. Impressive.

Chetwynd, BC

This wasn’t a lot of town, but it sponsors an annual chainsaw carving contest. We had to pick out just a few of them for the blog, but there were lots of them throughout the town. Check out the bench! Worthwhile stop, and won’t take very long.