Updates for July 17th, 18th and 19th

July 17th
Still in Skagway, got up this morning to find 4 cruise ships in dock. One of them was much bigger than the others. Ate breakfast, packed up and headed downtown to get Dale’s stamp on his US Park Passport book. People from off the ships already were walking thru the downtown area. Beautiful morning, the sun was shinny and little wind. Sure wish that had been yesterday. Hit the road to Haines Junction crossing the Canadian border about 9:15 Alaska time. Made a stop at Canyon Desert about 10:30ish. This is an area where the glaciers have dumped ground up rock that is sand and the river and wind continue to build the dunes! Looks very similar to the Indiana Shores sand dunes. More red in this sand but scrubby trees and all looked very desert like.

Whitehorse in the Yukon was our next stop for food and gas. Had lunch at the A&W (lots of those up here in Canada), gassed up the camper and visited a Canada Superstore for a few items. (Much like a Wal Mart.) After leaving Whitehorse we pretty much drove straight thru to our next campsite. The scenery was pretty much the same as we had been seeing; we made a couple of stops at pullouts to read about the area and looked for animals. Dale is getting anxious to see a Moose! Our campsite was at the Kluane RV camp grounds.

July 18th
Left camp at 8:10 Pacific Time and gassed up in Haines Junction. On the road to Haines, (not to be confused with Haines Junction.) to pick up another borough. (County) The first 10 miles were under repair with loose gravel watered down to cut the dust. Consequently our camper is now semi covered with reddish mud spatters. Then followed some of the widest, smoothest and nicest road we’ve had yet, about 37 miles of it. Then back to the usual semi rough narrower roads we’d come to expect up here. It was in this stretch the camper turned over 50,000 miles.

Then we came upon the highlight of this trip for me so far. There was a mother grizzly bear and her two cubs feeding on the grasses by the side of the road. Another vehicle had seen it first, happened to be two ladies who had been on the Juneau trip with Dale (the ones with the good eyes). We watched those 3 bears for the longest time. The cubs were so little and very playful. We took a lot of pictures. At first Mama Bear didn’t take much notice of us but eventually she sniffed the air, looked around and decided she didn’t like all the vehicles stopped and took off for the trees with cubs in tow. Pretty nifty! Before that Dale saw a porcupine cross the road, but I wasn’t quick enough with the camera to get a picture.

Went thru US customs about 10:00 Alaska Time. Got into Haines and found our way down to the harbor and parked to have lunch. Not as much to see down here as in Skagway, only one cruise ship in port. The sun had come out finally after a cool, cloudy morning. This is supposed to be Bald eagle country so on the way out we stopped by the river to read information and look for bald eagles. Dale did spot a couple of eagles out on a sand bar and watched one fly away pretty close to him. I never did see the one flying but could see the two out in the water.

Headed back up the Haines Hwy and crossed back into Canada about 3:25. Don’t know much what he saw after that as I fell asleep in my seat. My body doesn’t know what time it is anymore! Back to Haines Junction and on the Alcan Hwy west. Much of this drive was thru a long valley with different vegetation and a different mountain range. While it didn’t look like it, much of these mountains were covered in non polar icefields with some areas of ice up to 2000+ feet deep.

Dale’s camp destination for tonight was the Cottonwood campground on Lake Kluane, the largest lake in the Yukon. We had a beautiful campsite on the shore of the lake. Prettiest camp spot yet! Dale used his computer out by the water for awhile, but the mosquitoes eventually got to him and drove him back in the camper. We had a wide site so we could pull in sideways and see the lake and mountains in the background thru the windows! Made Dale a happy camper! He took some pictures about 12:30 AM, as there was still enough light for the mountains to reflect in the lake.

July 19th,
Slept in a little then broke camp and headed back out on the Alcan. At Burwash Landing saw a sign that said no fuel for 108 miles. You see these signs and then see a gas station fifty miles down the road. Not sure why the sign is even there, but don’t want to bet against it. Headed toward Destruction Bay, we had been warned about this stretch of the Alcan being rough because of the frost heaves. Lots of road repairs going on. Liquid tar with lots of loose gravel on top and some of these repairs were not well done. The road crews did a fairly good job of marking where you had to be careful though, especially in Canada. In Alaska their markings are a little less accurate. Sometimes they are before, sometimes at the start and sometimes in the middle of the rough spot. Many have 35 mph speed limits, which really reduces the miles you can make in a day. Most of the traffic seems to slow down, except for the pickup trucks that barrel on through. The backend of one pickup came clear off the road he bounced so hard.

Most of these frost heaves are due to the fact the there is perma frost in this area and putting in the road has consequently caused some of it to melt. When it melts it liquefies, settles and subsides ruining the road. They have been experimenting with ways to address this issue, but it does not appear they have any solutions yet as the road is a mess. It seems worse than it was in 1979, but not sure how good our memories are. At mile marker 1,886 there is some experimental stuff going on trying to figure out how to keep the perma frost from thawing out. There are tubes running underneath the road with openings to let cold air under the road. There was also another set in Alaska further down the road.

We ate lunch at a pullout just past Beaver Creek with the Alaska border in site. The line to be checked was backed up a little. We had no problem getting thru. Stopped at Tetlin Information center to get info on this area. This area is known for the trumpeter swans that migrate thru this area. We made a couple of stops along the way hoping to see some, but never did. Dale did spot one moose in a distant lake. From the pullout we could see it with the binoculars, but it was too far for the camera to get much.

We had Tok, Alaska as our camp destination tonight. We ended up at Grizzly RV Park about 60 miles on past Tok on the Glenn Highway.

Dale counted motorcycles today and we saw 79 not including those on trailers. While they say Alaska has the highest number of motorcycle per capita of any state in the Union, we think most of these were traveling, as they usually had lots of luggage tied on or a trailer. Several were from Canada. This number was not unusually high and may have been below average, as we have seen a lot of motorcycles just about every day.

Just a note on our return trip, we are not going the West coast route. They changed the procedure and we were not going to be able to pickup tickets for the UCLA game in LA, so we canceled out of the game. That means we might be home a little sooner, but still too early to tell.