Thursday, September 01, 2005
09/01/05 Thursday- Whitehorse to Watson's Lake
09/01/08 ThursdayWe traveled with Bill and Rossana Hayes from Albuquerque. We went from Whitehorse to Watson’s Lake, which completed our travel on the Alaska Highway. The 266 miles that we drove today was a repeat of one day as we went north. The only difference was that we were going from North to South. We had planned to stop for lunch at Mukluk Annie’s but we found it already closed for the winter. We continued down to Swift River Lodge and found it closed because it’s well did not pass the Health Department inspection. We finally found a place for lunch at the Continental Divide Lodge.
We got some pictures when we passed here going North, but we didn’t get much today because of the clouds and rain. They would have been repeats anyway. I think that we did get a couple of pictures of the pretty fall colors on the roadside and mountains.
We arrived at our RV Park about 2:15 PM. We are all set up and tucked in for the night and it is only 3:00 PM. Maybe I will go to bed early tonight. We did some stuff yesterday after I summarized our stay in Whitehorse. We took a boat ride on the Yukon River that lasted two
hours. We hoped to see some wild animals along the shore, but we didn’t. The only thing we saw was two Bald Eagles. We got pictures of them and should include them on our blog. The Yukon is around 2000 miles long, which makes it the fourth or fifth longest river in North America. It is the principal river in the Yukon and Alaska. It drains about three fourths of The Yukon Territory and half of Alaska. It is the source of much of the history of the gold rush because it was the main means of transportation during that period. We felt like we were going back in history a little as we traveled on the Yukon.Last night in Whitehorse some folks saw the Northern Lights.
One guy got up at 2:45 to go to the bathroom. He looked out a window and saw the sky lit up and went outside to check. They woke up some of the people close to them to see it, but did not wake everybody. I am sorry that we missed that. Oh well, maybe it’ll happen again tonight.We are really winding down on our trip. Today began the last week of our trip!!
08/30/05 Tuesday - Kluane to Whitehorse
08/30/05 TuesdayWe traveled in a group of three motor homes today. Our buddies were Tom and Joyce Knight and Dick and Ann Mulford from Maine. Tom and Joyce are from Melbourne, FL. and Tom is a brother to Ed Knight one we traveled with yesterday. This is our first day to travel in a group of three and we left at 8:00 AM as the three-vehicle group always does.
The rough road from yesterday continued, and it was cloudy and rainy for a lot of today. We didn’t get very good pictures, but I think we did get a good picture of some sheep that were way up high on a mountain. It was really a pretty sight because it was a big herd of
Mountain sheep scattered along the mountainside. There was a visitor’s center at the location where we stopped, and the mountain is named Sheep Mountain because it is the winter range for the sheep.It sounds funny to say the sheep were on their winter range, but it is almost winter here. The colors of fall are becoming brilliant and the nights are really getting cold. Every morning for the last three days there is a little more snow on the mountaintops. In the office at Kluane they told Mary that by the end of next week the leaf color would peak and they start to fall off. The sheep are all the wildlife that we saw.
We continued to follow along beside the Kluane Mountain Range and had some pretty looks at some of the large snow capped mountains, but I don’t know how well the pictures turned out. We did see some interesting things on the trip. We drove a big curving route around Lake Klusne, the largest lake in Yukon Territory. We did get some good pictures here of the lake and the mountains. We also crossed a small river named Slim’s River. The legend of the river is that it was named for a packhorse that drowned in the river during the 1903 Kluane Gold rush. Every creek, mountain, valley and mountain pass has some kind of colorful history to the name it was given.
We drove through two large construction sites on the road.
At the first site we had to sit and wait about 15 minutes while they were doing something with machinery. The second group caught up with us as we waited and we ran in a group of five for a while. I had to have a bathroom break and the second group continued on and got to the campground ahead of us. It rained as we were pulling into the RV Park and I had to set up in the rain. This is our second visit to this park and it poured when we were here last. I mentioned in an earlier note that we were covering a section of the Alaska Highway that we missed when we went north. We finished it today.
08/29/05 Monday - Tok to Kluane
08/29/05 Monday
Today it is Tok to Kluane. Our travel buddies were Ed and JoAnne Knight. They are probably the youngest people on the caravan, they b both retired at age 55. They are from New Castle, PA, which is near Pittsburgh. We are staying in Kluane Wilderness village and RV Park. We left at 8:30 AM and had just less than 200 miles to drive. All of the drive was on the Alaskan Highway. We traveled about 90 miles and came to the Canadian Border. There was a fuel stop about three miles before the border and we topped our tank off. It only took a little over 12 gallons, but it probably saved us about fifty cents a gallon.
There was a guy in a U-Haul truck who got looked at for about 25 minutes getting through customs. They had a huge line of people waiting by the time they finished with him. The finally opened another lane and started using two agents to get the line through. 
All together it took us forty-five minutes to get through customs. That has never happened to us before. We have always just moved right through. We stopped at a truck stop motel in Beaver Creek, Yukon Territory and had lunch.
For most of the day we traveled along the Kluane Mountain range. They are big mountains and a large number of the peaks are snow covered. Some of the lower slopes and the lower peaks have a powdering of new snow that must have fallen within the last couple of nights. I would not be surprised if we get snow before we are out of Canada. We saw a lot of fall color on the mountains. Even the Aspen trees are starting to turn yellow.
We saw only some swans in one of the little lakes along the road for our wildlife adventure. We haven’t seen wildlife in a few weeks. I think that we travel during the wring time of day. Also some of the animals change their habitat from summer to winter and they may be gone by now.
We arrived at our campground about 3:30 PM. We changed back into the Pacific Time Zone when we came back into Canada. I was glad to get here. The road is really rough and you have to constantly be alert for ground swells and construction. It is not easy to drive here
Mary met a wood carver who lives and has a shop in the RV Park where we were staying. He carved a special kind of wood called Burl. Burl starts as an irritation on Black Spruce trees, which are common to this area.
The tree sends extra sap to the affected area to help it heal. This sap starts and grows into the burl.. The burl may be cut green or taken from dead trees. Sometimes burls are just peeled of their bark and use for many purposes like fence posts. They may be carved into many things like furniture, walking canes, or bowls. Mary made a picture of some of his work that he had exhibited at his shop. Burl sounds a lot like a pine knot don’t it? Just think, we used to just burn them for kindling!!
Today it is Tok to Kluane. Our travel buddies were Ed and JoAnne Knight. They are probably the youngest people on the caravan, they b both retired at age 55. They are from New Castle, PA, which is near Pittsburgh. We are staying in Kluane Wilderness village and RV Park. We left at 8:30 AM and had just less than 200 miles to drive. All of the drive was on the Alaskan Highway. We traveled about 90 miles and came to the Canadian Border. There was a fuel stop about three miles before the border and we topped our tank off. It only took a little over 12 gallons, but it probably saved us about fifty cents a gallon.
There was a guy in a U-Haul truck who got looked at for about 25 minutes getting through customs. They had a huge line of people waiting by the time they finished with him. The finally opened another lane and started using two agents to get the line through. 
All together it took us forty-five minutes to get through customs. That has never happened to us before. We have always just moved right through. We stopped at a truck stop motel in Beaver Creek, Yukon Territory and had lunch.For most of the day we traveled along the Kluane Mountain range. They are big mountains and a large number of the peaks are snow covered. Some of the lower slopes and the lower peaks have a powdering of new snow that must have fallen within the last couple of nights. I would not be surprised if we get snow before we are out of Canada. We saw a lot of fall color on the mountains. Even the Aspen trees are starting to turn yellow.
We saw only some swans in one of the little lakes along the road for our wildlife adventure. We haven’t seen wildlife in a few weeks. I think that we travel during the wring time of day. Also some of the animals change their habitat from summer to winter and they may be gone by now.We arrived at our campground about 3:30 PM. We changed back into the Pacific Time Zone when we came back into Canada. I was glad to get here. The road is really rough and you have to constantly be alert for ground swells and construction. It is not easy to drive here
Mary met a wood carver who lives and has a shop in the RV Park where we were staying. He carved a special kind of wood called Burl. Burl starts as an irritation on Black Spruce trees, which are common to this area.
The tree sends extra sap to the affected area to help it heal. This sap starts and grows into the burl.. The burl may be cut green or taken from dead trees. Sometimes burls are just peeled of their bark and use for many purposes like fence posts. They may be carved into many things like furniture, walking canes, or bowls. Mary made a picture of some of his work that he had exhibited at his shop. Burl sounds a lot like a pine knot don’t it? Just think, we used to just burn them for kindling!!08/28/05 Sunday - Valdez to Tok
08/28/05 Sunday
Today we traveled from Valdez to Tok. Our travel partners were Norbert and Helen Boehm. They are from New York. They have a couple traveling with them named John and Peggy, I don’t even know their last name. We led for the first half of the trip and then we asked Norbert to lead after we stopped and ate. John was a good navigator and kept us informed what was coming next according to Mile Post.
We returned over Hwy 4, which we had traveled to get to Valdez from Glennalleln. We stopped again at Bridal Veil Falls and Mary took some more pictures. About three miles before we got to the intersection of the highways in Glennallen we came to a pullout with a good view of the Wrangell Mountains. These mountains were not even visible when we passed through this area on our way to Valdez, because of the clouds and fog. We went up on the bluff and saw the mountains in the distance. There were four mountains visible that were all taller than 12,000 feet; Mount Stanford is 16,237, Mount Drumm is 12,010, Mount Wrangell is 14,163 and Mount Blackburn is 16,390. We passed through Glennallen and turned toward Tok on Alaska Hwy 1 and we ran alongside this mountain range for about a hundred miles. They are huge and snow covered, and beautiful. The range is a part of the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, which is the second largest National Park in North America. This park along with Kluane National Park in Canada has been designated a World Heritage Site by the United Nations. We live in an impressive country. You can’t realize the scope of it beauty, every day I see something that I think is the prettiest thing I have ever seen.
The road is not a thing of beauty. We went over a very rough road. There were patches of construction where the pavement was gone and it was loose gravel. People just will not slow down in these areas and they scatter rocks and gravel everywhere. We met a lady in a passenger car and she must have been going 70 MPH. A big rock flew up and hit the windshield in our Motor Home. It hit right at the bottom under the windshield wiper and it cracked the glass all the way to the top. We will have to have a new windshield.
Almost as bad were what they call ground swells. I guess the earth is pushed up by the permafrost and caused big humps in the road. They are not like potholes, because most of the time the payment is not broken, but it is more like jumping a curb with no sidewalk behind it. It moves stuff around in the cabinets if you hit those things going too fast,
Tonight is our last night in Alaska. We cross back over into the Yukon Territory tomorrow. We are back on the Alaskan Highway, which we started out on. When we came north we took the Klondike Loop just north of Whitehorse and went to Dawson City, on up over the Top of the World Highway and into Tok What we are doing now is going south on the strip of the Alcan which we missed because we took the Klondike
Loop.
Today we traveled from Valdez to Tok. Our travel partners were Norbert and Helen Boehm. They are from New York. They have a couple traveling with them named John and Peggy, I don’t even know their last name. We led for the first half of the trip and then we asked Norbert to lead after we stopped and ate. John was a good navigator and kept us informed what was coming next according to Mile Post.
We returned over Hwy 4, which we had traveled to get to Valdez from Glennalleln. We stopped again at Bridal Veil Falls and Mary took some more pictures. About three miles before we got to the intersection of the highways in Glennallen we came to a pullout with a good view of the Wrangell Mountains. These mountains were not even visible when we passed through this area on our way to Valdez, because of the clouds and fog. We went up on the bluff and saw the mountains in the distance. There were four mountains visible that were all taller than 12,000 feet; Mount Stanford is 16,237, Mount Drumm is 12,010, Mount Wrangell is 14,163 and Mount Blackburn is 16,390. We passed through Glennallen and turned toward Tok on Alaska Hwy 1 and we ran alongside this mountain range for about a hundred miles. They are huge and snow covered, and beautiful. The range is a part of the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, which is the second largest National Park in North America. This park along with Kluane National Park in Canada has been designated a World Heritage Site by the United Nations. We live in an impressive country. You can’t realize the scope of it beauty, every day I see something that I think is the prettiest thing I have ever seen.
The road is not a thing of beauty. We went over a very rough road. There were patches of construction where the pavement was gone and it was loose gravel. People just will not slow down in these areas and they scatter rocks and gravel everywhere. We met a lady in a passenger car and she must have been going 70 MPH. A big rock flew up and hit the windshield in our Motor Home. It hit right at the bottom under the windshield wiper and it cracked the glass all the way to the top. We will have to have a new windshield.
Almost as bad were what they call ground swells. I guess the earth is pushed up by the permafrost and caused big humps in the road. They are not like potholes, because most of the time the payment is not broken, but it is more like jumping a curb with no sidewalk behind it. It moves stuff around in the cabinets if you hit those things going too fast,Tonight is our last night in Alaska. We cross back over into the Yukon Territory tomorrow. We are back on the Alaskan Highway, which we started out on. When we came north we took the Klondike Loop just north of Whitehorse and went to Dawson City, on up over the Top of the World Highway and into Tok What we are doing now is going south on the strip of the Alcan which we missed because we took the Klondike
Loop.
