Quick Impressions at the Half-Way Point

Denali National Park

As I write this, we are sitting in our trailer in Seldotna, Alaska (on the Kenai Peninsula south of Anchorage). Because of its relatively moderate climate for Alaska (it rarely gets below -10 degrees Farenheit here) and its abundance of retirees it is considered by some to be the "Florida" of Alaska.

Campsite near Whitecourt, Alberta, Canada

This is roughly the half-way point of our trip. Bronwyn is working on detailed blog entries about each part of the trip so far, but her ability to upload pictures and post the detailed blog entries has been limited the limited availability of internet at our campsites and the limited bandwidth where we have had internet access. Thus, I've decided to provide a quick summary of our trip so far. Joan (who prefers to be called Joanie) has also created her own blog about the trip at http://joaniegaskins12.blogspot.com/.

June 1 - We got up early to fly from Amsterdam to Iceland to Washington, D.C., where we rented a car and drove to Annapolis, Maryland to visit the grandkids (William and Ruth) and also spend some time with their parents (Helen and Thompson Graves).  Mostly we slept.

William and Ruth give a puppet show

June 3 - We drove from Annapolis, MD to Mooresville, NC.  We could not stay at our home in Charlotte because our house is rented until July 30. The original plan was to stay at our lake house, but the house was empty because we moved all of the furniture out so that the house could be gutted while we were in France. (The lake house is still small and simple, but at least the roof doesn't leak any more and mildewed ceiling tiles are not falling out of the ceiling.)

June 4-11 - We spent an exhausting week moving furniture, making the lake house semi-habitable, preparing the truck and trailer for the trip to Alaska, and dealing with various other loose ends. On the eve of our departure, the electric trailer jack froze up and a window broke, which necessitated two emergency repairs. We found a replacement jack (which we purchased two minutes before the RV dealer closed for the weekend), but the replacement window had to be ordered from the Airstream factory so Rick (with the help of a neighbor who had access to a race car shop) fabricated substitute window out of Lexan.

Rick, Frankie (the dog), Joanie and Bronwyn
ready to hit the road (note the clean truck and trailer)

June 12 - After completing the repairs and hastily throwing the last few things in the trailer, we departed for Alaska.  Our first stop was a pleasant RV park outside of Nashville, TN.

June 13-16 - We raced across the United States to Pocatello, Idaho via Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, Wyoming and southern Idaho.  Along the way we stopped at the Apple Valley Hillbilly Garden and Toyland (an off the beaten path of Americana that definitely can be missed), the Bailey Yard (one of the largest railcar sorting yards in the world) and the Soda Springs Geyser, but mostly we were just trying to get to my counsin's house in Pocatello where we were picking up her daughter (Alli), who is the same age as Joanie. For the first two days, the heat and humidity were oppressive and I was wondering why I had packed long-sleeved shirts. In Wyoming we hit ferocious 35 mph headwinds that knocked 4 mpg off of our already dreadful gas mileage. We also started seeing wildlife, including a couple of bears and lots of antelope. In Pocatello, we picked up Alli Gunter, who is Joanie's second cousin and the same age as Joanie.  Alli would be accompanying us for two weeks until Anchorage, AK.

Milepost Zero of the Alaskan Highway

June 18-20 - After a day of rest and relaxation with family in Pocatello, we headed north to the Alaska Highway, which begins in Dawson Creek, British Columbia. By the time we reached northern Montana, I was glad that I packed those long-sleeved shirts. We even picked up a tailwind as we entered Alberta. Our gas mileage exceeded 10 mpg as we paralleled the Rocky Mountains through the plains of Alberta, but quickly dropped as we began making our way through the Rocky Mountains into British Columbia. Joanie and Alli spent most of the time giggling in the back seat. In Dawson Creek, BC, we visited museum about the construction of the Alaska Highway (amazing) and had our pictures taken in front of Milepost zero, the official start of the Alaska Highway.

Liard Hot Springs

We spent the evening of June 20 at Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park. The hot springs were a welcome relief after a week on the road. After soaking in the hot springs, we barely noticed the bad storm that passed through the campground during the night. We later learned that the storm washed out the road near Dawson Creek so we were fortunate to sneak through before the road was closed.

Signpost forest in Watson Lake, BC

June 21-24 - As we winded our way through the mountains along the Alaskan Highway we were generally impressed by the better-than-expected condition of the road although there were occasional frost heaves, intermittent sections of gravel and frequent waits for road construction. We were also excited to start seeing more and more wildlife, including bears, caribou, and something that was either a large fox or perhaps a wolf.

Joanie panning for gold on Eldarado Creek

We turned off of the Alaskan Highway shortly after Whitehorse,YT and headed north to Dawson City, YT - the epicenter of one of the biggest the Klondike Gold Rush. We camped for two nights outside of Dawson City on Bonanza Creek, where the richest gold deposits were found. Joanie and Alli tried panning for gold, but they only found a few flakes of gold (not enough to pay for the gas, as I had hoped). One of the surprising things about Dawson City was that there were active small mining operations on almost every creek in the area. I had expected Dawson Creek to be a tourist town with museums about mining, but it was an active, gritty mining town with a tourist veneer.

On the road to Dawson City we started seeing more and more vehicles on the side of the road with flat tires and at the campground we started hearing horror stories from the people who had just traveled the route that we planned to travel after Dawson City. The owner of the trailer next to us had seven flat tires and a broken axle in one day. We kept our fingers crossed that we would not be the next casualty.

Paddle wheeler graveyard on the Yukon River near Dawson City

June 25 - Although we had heard horror stories about the drive from Dawson City, YT to Chicken, AK, we decided that we would make the drive as slowly and carefully as possible rather than backtracking for hundreds of miles over roads that were only slightly better. The drive began by crossing the fast-moving Yukon River on a vessel that looked more like a World War II landing craft than a ferry. The "ferry" could handle two RVs at a time and it deposited us on a freshly graded bank of gravel where a bulldozer was waiting to help drag us up the bank if we could not make it on our own. The first part of the drive to the U.S. border was steep and narrow in spots, but paved. After that, things began to deteriorate. Within the first two miles of entering the United States, the trailer in front of us hit a frost heave and broke an axle on what was supposed to be the best section of the road. The guidebooks described the next two sections of the road, which were narrow and unpaved, as poor and worse than poor with eroded edges, no guardrails and thousand foot drops. The guidebook advised anybody with a fear of heights not to sit on the right side of the vehicle.

Moon Lake where moose frolicked outside our trailer
while we were sleeping

After taking four hours to drive 109 miles, the four or five buildings of Chicken, Alaska were a welcome sight. Thankfully, after Chicken, AK the road started getting better although you still had to keep a watchful eye for frost heaves and potholes. By the time we returned to the Alaska Highway near Tok, the Alaska Highway seemed like a pretty good road. We spent the night camped beside a small lake (Moon Lake) near Tok, Alaska. I was exhausted from the drive and slept soundly. The next morning we learned that fellow campers had observed a mother moose and her calf swimming and feeding in the lake near our trailer during the evening after we had fallen asleep.

End of the Alaskan Highway in Delta Junction, AK

June 26-28 - We spent the next three nights camped near Fairbanks, Alaska. While we were in Fairbanks, we took a paddle wheel cruise down the river, visited a recreation of a Athabaskan village, and checked our various other attractions. Mostly, we rested and went shopping to get ready for two nights of primitive camping in Denali National Park.

June 29-31 - After a beautiful 3-hour drive from Fairbanks to Denali National Park, I was excited to see the campsite that I had to reserve six months earlier. I had chosen the campground because it was supposed to have a view of Mt. McKinley (the official name of the mountain also known as Denali) when the clouds parted momentarily to permit a view, and lots of hiking trails. Upon arrival we were informed that the campground had been closed to all but hard-sided campers and most of the trails had been closed due to an aggressive bear in the area. A hiker had thrown a backpack loaded with candy bars and soda at the bear as an attempt at self-defense so the bear now associated backpacks with food. The original plan was to reeducate the bear by planting daypacks and pelting the bear with rubber bullets and beanbags whenever it touched a backpack so that the bear would associate backpacks with pain rather than food. We never saw the bear, but apparently it mauled somebody near the campground the day before we left so they decided to trap and kill the bear instead of reeducating the bear.

Fox on the hunt in Denali National Park

During our time at Denali we had a few breaks in the clouds where we thought that we saw the top of Mt. McKinley, but we were never quite sure. Regardless of whether we actually saw the top of Mt. McKinley, the best part about Denali was the wildlife. We saw lots of moose, hundreds of caribou, two foxes, several grizzly bears (from a safe distance),

I had been worried that two nights at a primitive, somewhat isolated, campground would be difficult but I think that we were all reluctant to leave Denali.

July 1-3 - We drove from Denali National Park to Anchorage on July 1, and stayed at an RV park near downtown Anchorage for the next two nights. Between the midnight sun and the train horns, it was not easy to sleep, but it was nice to do some laundry and have a sewer hook-up. Bronwyn and I also snuck out for dinner with just the two of us while the girls had a movie night in the trailer.

Bronwyn at Spencer Glacier

On July 2, we walked over to the Alaskan Railroad depot and caught a train to the Spencer Glacier whistle stop, where a Forest Service guide led us on a hike to base of Spencer Glacier. Along the way, we passed numerous other glaciers and lots of wildlife. It was a long day, but very enjoyable. The next morning, we got up at 3:15 a.m. in order to get Alli to the airport. She was flying to Portland, Oregon to join a family reunion. Joanie was particularly sad to see her contemporary depart. For the rest of the trip she would not have anyone her own age to giggle with in the back seat.

Bronwyn tries out a new gadget
for zapping mosquitoes

Mosquitoes are certainly present in Alaska, but not as bad
as we expected.