On the way to Valdez, AK

We left Tok this morning after a good nights rest in a pleasant grove of trees.  We traveled more rough road.  This time so much so that we only made 160 miles and quit after 5 hours of driving.  We are in Glennallen, AD, where the road divides between Valdez and Anchorage.  When we stopped and I started hooking up the utilities, I found that the cable from the coach to the truck that actuates the truck brakes had broken.  So, no brakes on the tow.  That meant a trip to the local hardware store for cable and fittings and a kluge to get it back together.  We'll see how well it works when we leave this morning.

32 wheels! count 'em

For the truck guys:  They are really serious about their trucks up here.   I first noticed that when I was passed by a behemoth with 26 wheels and a trailer longer than the rv.  Then while we were eating dinner in Watson's Lake, these two rigs pulled in and their drivers came in to eat dinner.  I snuck out and took this picture.  Thirty two wheels...wouldn't you like to be a tire store when these guys showed up.   A whole month's sales on one vehicle.

 

Valdez, Alaska.

We made it to Valdez over mostly reasonable roads through more amazing mountains.  The mountain ranges in Alaska seem to run from the center of the state on the Canadian border to the coast north of Anchorage.  There is a second large range that runs up the coast from Vancouver, BC north.  Valdez sits in an inlet off the Prince William sound.  This got to be the only town sitting at sea level with mountains so high that the clouds cover the peaks.  Come to think of it, Vancouver is similar. 

As you go south from Glennallen, you pass alongside the west edge of the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.  The sign above shows the mountains and here is a picture of Drum Mountain.  I am standing on the west side of the  Copper river valley.   The Copper river you see in the lower right runs along the valley floor at my feet before curving to the east.  (By the way, this is my only moose picture so far.  He's in there if you look really hard.)  This is a very famous salmon fishery and Copper river red salmon are highly prized.  This is the territory of the Ahtna people and are several spots where First Nation people have set up fish wheels  (link will tell you about them.)  I will try to get pictures of the wheels as we visit the river valley later.

We arrived in Valdez after coming over the Richardson pass, another example of how going north really changes the relationship between altitude and the environment in a given area.  The pass is approx. 2600 feet high, but the climate is that of country 12000 feet high in Colorado or New Mexico.  The top of the pass is a splendid view that seemed to take all the traffic into the parking lot just as fast as it arrived.


Panoramic view of Richardson Pass summit

You leave the summit and come down the pass dropping the whole 2600 feet in one long grade.  It's 22 miles from the city limits to the center of town.   Along the way, you are treated to a series of waterfalls such as this one. 















As you reach town, you find an arm of the Prince William Sound with the town nestled in the mountains on the shore.

Atlastalaska

 

Oh how long I have waited to  post that title.  We finally made it.  We can attest to the fact that there is a land bridge from the lower US and Alaska.  It's called Canada and its a really big place.

Waiting for the follow me

Well, the Alaska Highway is what people say it is.  It is reasonably good road, although after driving all day, one is sick of the vibration and bouncing around.  A few days of this makes you wish for a smooth road.  Worse yet is the highway (de)construction.  For example, it took us an hour to go 26 km the other day with a "follow me" truck leading us in a convoy.  In front of it was another truck dumping water on the road.  The stop light in the middle of nowhere was rather spectacular.  But all the steps of highway (de)construction go on at once in all the lanes, so the convoy is probably a good idea.  By the way, there was as much traffic behind us as in front of us.



No longer a white truck...doesn't do it justice

Apparently they finally give up on patching and just reduce everything to a rock base.  Then they  add water and roll it and add water and roll it until they get tired.  Finally, they oil it and roll a layer of rock onto the oil.  Meanwhile, what a muddy mess. 

However, after we left Destruction Bay, the highway earned its reputation.

WE GOT THE HEAVES

The frost heaves, that is.  By this time we have gotten far enough north that the ground is permanently frozen except near the surface, i.e. permafrost.  As a result, the road suffers frost heaving.  That takes a normal road and converts it to a roller coaster ride with subsided parts of pavement that are deep enough to bottom out the suspension.  Added to that is pavement twisting that results in a ride just like a small boat in a stormy ocean.  NOT FUN!  Even at 20 mph, the road is so rough that it feels like you are going to shake the rv apart.  The best part is that you often cannot see the flaws in the road in front of you.  The road looks normal.  I found the best sign of impending trouble was the sets of skid marks in the bottom of a dip!  If you were lucky, this was enough warning to get slowed down somewhat.  Note that the USS RV neither slows down or speeds up quickly.  This does not happen continuously, just in stretches, usually you get to a new one just about the time you have gotten your speed regulated again from the last one.

Add this to mountain passes and it takes all day to go 230 miles.  Tok, Alaska was a very welcome sight indeed.  We spent two hours washing the rv and the truck, went out to dinner and went to bed.

Black Spruce

Black Spruce

See the trees that look like worn out brushes?   Well there are miles and miles of them.  Most of the time they look like they are on the edge of dying or are diseased. They also don't seem inclined to grow vertically, just every which way.  They are kind of interesting.  Remember the permafrost.  The ground only thaws so far down and remains frozen below that year round.  Black spruce are one of the few plants that can stand to have its roots frozen all year long and live for a long time.  Trees such as these can be 100 years old.   The wood is extremely dense.

Destruction Bay

If you look at the map, you find out that there is over 400 miles between Whitehorse and the nearest town in Alaska, Tok.  Being seasoned Alaska Highway travelers now, we ruled out the little black dots with very small writing for names.  Those are usually two abandoned buildings, one gas pump, and someplace Pat won't enter, much less sleep in.  Oh and they are still closed for the season.  


Leaving Whitehorse, the next town is Haines Junction, where another road goes south to Haines, Alaska.  Coming into town you are treated to a view of the Kulane mountains that includes the highest mountain in Canada. 

Do you remember the fellow I told you about who maintained that anywhere south of the Yukon, you couldn't get good sourdough bread?  Well, Haines Junction Bakery is where its at!  And the sticky buns are that big!





So, Cottonwood RV Park just south of Destruction Bay, YT.  Must be a thriving place, right?  Actually turned out to be the nicest place we have stayed yet.  You only get 15 amps because they generate their own electricity and you have to take all your trash with you because the grizzly bears frequently wander through the park.  The folks who run the place really like the bears and know the cubs from year to year.  Actually, if left alone, they seem to spend their time eating flowers and dandelions. (Hmmm, how come all those bells are in the scat???).   The park is on the shore of Lulane Lake and across the highway are snow covered mountains, a continuation of the range you see in the picture above.  A beautiful setting. 


This picture was taken there, at 12:06 AM, surely the land of the midnight sun. 

Oh, Destruction Bay was so named after a wind storm got done with the place, oh well so much for perfection.

A side trip to Skagway, Alaska

The border is up there

From Whitehorse, its a surprisingly short distance to the Alaskan panhandle.  Its also a good cheat, we could get to Alaska the easy way.  So, we decided to drive over the border and visit Skagway.  What an amazing drive.  All of the sudden huge mountains appeared, complete with the now de rigueur beautiful mountain lake at their feet.  We climbed into tundra country that consisted of miles of jumbled rock and stunted trees.  Winters up there must be amazing. 



The Land Between the Border Stations

After you leave the Canadian border post, you have another 26 miles of mountain driving until you reach the White Pass.  As mountain passes go, this one it the steepest. longest and most impressive I have ever been on, and I've been on a few!  In one place they gave up on gluing the road to the side of the mountain and used a suspension bridge between two granite slabs.

When you get out of the pass, you enter the US.  I'll bet the Canadians border officers are jealous of the US guys because they don't have to climb the pass like the Canadians whose border is on top of the mountains.

We had been to Skagway before by Holland America cruise ship.  And there in the harbor was a Holland America cruise ship.  But instead of wandering around looking lost like people off the ship were, we were cruising in a white pickup truck.  Much cooler.

Skagway takes a short time to tour, but the history is something else.  At the turn of the 20th century, people were pouring into the town from San Francisco to make the trip to the Klondike gold fields.  Some of the old buildings are preserved and having just come down the White Pass, you had real sympathy for those souls who had to hike up it pulling a mule.

Looking towards Skagway on the road to Dyea

If you take the only left turn leaving Skagway, you go down 9 miles or so of dirt road to a ghost town called Dyea which was the shipping port for many of the goods sent to the Klondike and also the beginning of the Chilkoot trail.  This pass was the only one useable in the winter.  There is a famous picture of a solid line of people and mules walking up the pass. 

The road ends in a historic park that contains what is left of Dyea.  There is one false front and a few timbers to mark what was the main street of town and there is a cemetery called slide cemetery.








 This was too much, what is a slide cemetery?  It turns out that there was a freak thaw early one spring and an avalanche killed many of the people on the trail.  People rushed to the mountain to try and rescue those trapped.

 In the end, 76 people were buried in the cemetery and it became known as slide cemetery.  Oh and there was a forest service notice that a bear had tried to open hikers packs two days before.  This was amusing until I found bear scat on the trail back in the woods.  But, I didn't smell bear.  Good enough.

The start of the Chilkoot trail

The trip back got us home in time for a late dinner.....a fun day.

Whitehorse, Yukon Territory

Whitehorse is a small island of civilization surrounded by pine and spruce trees buried in the mountains.  You can eat salmon, go to restaurants like the Winds Café, and have tea in a Japanese tea house.  Or, you can go dogsledding in the winter on a mild -30 below day.  It's the capital of the territory, so it has the government buildings and it has a history from the gold rush days. 


SS Klondike

People would travel to Seward Alaska by ship and set out from there to eventually reach Whitehorse via the Yukon river.  In the peak of the gold rush, there were paddlewheel steamers to take people, supplies, and mail up the Yukon to the gold fields outside Dawson City.  They have one of those boats on display as you enter town. 

Just upstream of town is Miles Canyon.  Today its a placid stream flowing into a lake, but during gold rush days, the canyon was a torrent of rapids and whirlpools that destroyed many of the boats the miners used to float their supplies and equipment to Whitehorse.  Today there is a suspension bridge for foot traffic across the canyon and a great network of trails to hike.  I took advantage of two nice afternoons to cross the canyon and hike along it as well as hiking up into the woods towards the mountains.  Very refreshing after days of driving all day.

The trails are very well marked and are wide corridors through the trees.  I was impressed with them.  I met people running along the canyon's edge, others bicycling through the trees and hiking like me.   After looking over some of the trail map signs, I realized that it didn't end with winter.  They also used the trails for cross country skiing.  Now I begin to envy them.

Since its still springtime up here, the spring and early flowers are blooming.  I found this grove of aspen trees with blue Astilbe growing among them.  If this is like New Mexico, the wet spring months produce a riot of flowers that disappear as the days warm up and the rainfall drops.   Pat and I hiked to Mora Flats in the Pecos Wilderness early one summer and endured days of rains and repeated soakings.  Our reward was seeing the valley so covered in flowers you could not walk between them.  Many times I have been up there later in the year when there was no evidence that a flower had ever grown there.  Just grass.






















And if you really want to, you can drive ten miles...oops 13km...to have a really good latte and a cheese sandwich in a coffee house buried in the woods.

But, the sun is still up!

As we go farther north, a strange thing has happened. The sunset has kept getting later and later. We are at the summer solstice, so the days are reaching their greatest length. Last night the sun was still shining in my face as I yawned and thought I was really getting sleepy. It was 10:30 in the evening. It feels like when I was a kid and had to go to sleep before sunset in the summer. I hated that.  I think this will continue as we get further north. 

We are thinking about driving to the artic circle to see what its like and just to say we did it. However, its a three day trip of 1000 miles on a gravel road. I dunno, that's a lot of driving.

UPDATE:
Yep, it gets worst the further north you go.  Now its not dark in the middle of the night.

Critter count

Stone Goat

OK, so we have seen creatures along the road. Here is the score so far:

8-10 Stone Goats

4 Bighorn Sheep

Innumerable Pikas

8 Buffalo 

2 Bear



1 Elk

1 Caribou

No Moose

Today we are going to a wildlife refuge to see what we can find.  Hopefully the critter count changes.

Carabou

UPDATE:  NO such luck,  a tourist trap.  You couldn't frame a picture that didn't have barbed wire in it and they wanted money for this!