Our Alaska Caravan - Week Three

Our last chapter covered the second week of our 48 day Alaska caravan and finished with us in Fairbanks, Alaska. This chapter will cover the seven days of Week Three.

Wednesday, July 29 - Day Fifteen. Oh boy, another busy day with an early start. We were up and waiting for the bus to pick us up at 8:00 a.m. Our first stop was at the Discovery III sternwheeler. This was an authentic (although built in 1987) that provides tourist cruises on the Chena River through Fairbanks. It was a very large boat with diesel power that actually used the large stern wheel for propulsion. The company actually runs two boats, the Discovery II and the III, and both were in use when we cruised. We arrived at the dock and found a dozen other tour buses lined up discharging tourists. We have seen dozens of Princess and Holland America buses while in Fairbanks. Both cruise lines offer land/sea cruise options where the passengers cruise up to Anchorage from Seattle or Vancouver and then get off the ship for a week or two of bus cruising around Alaska.

The boat ride was very interesting and fun. We saw a lot of very nice river front homes as we cruised down the river. They also set up a “flight demonstration” with a small single engine airplane on floats taking off and landing on the river right next to the boat. They also had radio contact with the pilot so they were able to pipe the pilot’s commentary over the boat PA system. Later on we stop alongside a sled dog training and breeding center. Again, they had radio contact with the ladyon the shore who talked for a while about the Alaska Husky breed and showed a bunch of dogs in training. One of the demonstrations was hooking up a dog team to an ATV which had the engine removed. This was how they trained the dogs in the summer. It was fun to watch how excited the dogs were to work and pull the “sled” along the trail. The boat then cruised down to where the Chena River flowed into the Tanana River, a main tributary of the Yukon River.

The boat then turned around and went upstream again, stopping at a Native American cultural center that the company built for its passengers. We got to get off the boat here and spent about an hour walking around the cultural center. They had a number of Native American docents who were giving short lectures about native life and also had a lot of displays of native living shelters, houses, tents, fishing camps and fur camps. They also had a couple of reindeer on display and a pen with a bunch of sled dogs that people could pet. We also learned that reindeer are exactly the same animal as caribou, the only difference being that reindeer were domesticated. After visiting the cultural center we got back on the boat and headed back to the dock where they had, of course, a large gift shop! We did buy some canned smoked salmon on the boat after they gave away samples of salmon dip. It tasted so good we wanted to get some. We were able to resist the gift shop however.

After the boat ride we were back on the bus and headed to the other side of the river to the Pump House restaurant for lunch. They had a very nice buffet set up for us and, of course, we overate. The Pump House had an interesting history in that the building the restaurant is in originally housed a set of very large electric pumps which pumped water from the Chena river over the rim of the valley to the agricultural areas to the North. After a while the pumps were no longer used and the building was abandoned. After a great lunch we were back on the bus again and headed to the El Dorado Gold Mine. On the way the bus driver stopped at the Alaska Pipeline visitor’s center. It turns out that our bus driver, who works for the RV park we are staying in, worked on the pipeline when it was being constructed. He provided some interesting information, as did the displays at the visitor’s center. The pipeline is 48 inches in diameter and the walls of the steel pipe are a half inch thick. The entire pipeline is insulated and is buried about four feet in the ground for much of the way from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. It is buried where the soil is rock, but where there is permafrost they elevate it on supports. They had to do this to keep the heat from the movement of the oil through the pipe from melting the permafrost soil and causing the pipe to loose support and sink. Even the supports are insulated and, in some cases cooled, to avoid melting of the permafrost. The supports are also constructed to keep the pipeline from breaking during earthquakes. The pipeline, built in the mid-70's, runs 800 miles from the North Slope of Alaska’s Arctic Ocean shore to Valdez on the Southern coast. This stop was very informative and interesting.

After the pipeline visit we continued on to the El Dorado Gold Mine. This is an active gold mining operation, although in my opinion it is now primarily a tourist mining activity. I think they figured out that you can make more money mining it out of the pockets of visitors than you can digging it out of the ground. We got off the bus and were put on an imitation train for a short ride up the hill to the mining area. Along the way we went through a simulated underground gold mine and there was a guy in there explaining how underground mining was done. It was pretty interesting and they did have a lot of old authentic equipment lying around the grounds. The train let us off at a large open area where they had a big sluice operation set up. They had seats on either side of the sluice and when everyone was settled in they dumped a bunch of “ore” into the sluice and turned the water on to demonstrate how the sluice worked. They then had a couple of kids come out with gold pans and demonstrate how the miners panned for gold. The kid doing it in front of us actually came up with a pretty good size nugget.

After the sluice demonstration they put us all into a large area with benches and water troughs and gave us gold pans and little bags of “ore” to pan. Both Jackie and I found a dozen or so flakes of gold in our pan after working the ore. I must say it was a lot of fun to see the gold worked out of the dirt and rock. This was the first time I had ever actually panned and I found it was pretty hard work. It took me a long time to find a few flakes and my hand hurt from holding the pan. Jackie and I put our flakes together and took it to get weighed. We ended up with about 5 grains of gold weight, the lady told us that was worth about $39. Turns out that we ended up with more gold than anyone else in our group! Jackie had it put in a little vial on a necklace that they sold in the gift shop.

After the gift shop visit we got back on the little train and headed back down the hill to the bus. The bus then took us back to the campground where our leader Larry had set up a barbeque for us. He cooked up a bunch of beer brats and hamburgers and we just all got together and talked while we ate. It made for a good end to a long day because everyone in the group was pretty much whipped. After the cookout we went back to the coach and went to bed early because we still had one more day of early starts and activities.

Thursday, July 30 - Day Sixteen. Once again our bus was waiting for us at 8:00 a.m. for another tour. I haven’t mentioned that the bus we have been using here in Fairbanks is provided by the RV park. The bus is about 40 years old and painted bright pink and blue. It seems to run pretty well, but the suspension is shot so it rolls and pitches like an old fishing boat in a storm. We have had the same driver for every trip and he seems pretty knowledgeable about Fairbanks and the history of the area.

Today was very smokey. There are several forest fires not too far South of Fairbanks and today the wind is blowing the smoke over the city. There is also a temperature inversion which is keeping the smoke low to the ground. You can smell the fire is visibility is very poor. The bus first took us to downtown Fairbanks to the Ice Museum. This museum was in an old movie theater and was dedicated to the art of ice sculpture. Apparently there is an renowned international ice sculpting competition held every year in Fairbanks so the city created this museum as a way of providing support. They first showed us a 20 minute film that showed how they got the ice out of the lakes in the dead of winter. They cut huge 4,000 pound blocks that are used for the competition. One competition is for sculptures that only use one large block, another one is for sculptures that use 10 of these huge blocks. The film showed some of the sculptures from past years and they were phenomenal. It is unbelievable how beautiful the sculptures are when completed. The sculptures are all lit with colored lights which really makes them stand out.

After the film they turned on the lights and we saw that on three sides of the theater were large coolers with some of last year’s sculptures stored in them. The coolers had windows so you didn’t have to go inside to see the work. They said they kept the coolers at 20 degrees below zero to keep the ice fresh. I went inside to check out the work close up, but I didn’t spend too much time in there because it was major COLD. One of the sculptors, who also works for the museum, then put on a brief demonstration of ice carving. He was a past winner in the competition and it was amazing how effortless it seemed for him to carve a picture of a rose in a block of ice.

After the Ice Museum we were back on the pink bus and headed for the University of Alaska’s Museum of the North. This is apparently a brand new museum and it was pretty interesting. The bottom floor had a large exhibit room with a large variety of interesting stuff regarding the cultures of Alaska, the animals, the plants, and the geology. Upstairs was a large art gallery with art from Alaska artists, including a lot of Native Americans. We spent a couple of hours at the museum and ended the visit with a film on the Northern Lights. It was an interesting explanation of how the lights are created and the pictures of the lights were very beautiful. Although Fairbanks is in the prime zone for viewing the lights, we won’t see any because it doesn’t get dark enough during this time of year to see them. Too bad. That would be something special.

After the museum we got back on the pink bus and headed back to the campground. We finally had an afternoon off. After a quick lunch Jackie and I took the car and headed into Fairbanks to visit the Elks Lodge. This was our first visit to an American Elks Lodge in a couple of months. The lodge is located right on the banks of the Chena River near downtown Fairbanks. The lodge was open and we went in and had a drink. We found the people very friendly. There were about a half dozen folks in the bar and after a little while we had a nice conversation with them. The lodge has about 850 members. We were able to get a lodge pin for our collection. We also stopped at a couple of stores looking for a small compact freezer. Several of the group, including us, were interested in finding a small freezer because we all anticipate catching a bunch of fish in the next weeks and want to be able to store them. Different people were visiting different stores checking to see what was available. Unfortunately, everyone struck out - no compact freezers to be had anywhere in Fairbanks it seems. We then headed back to the coach for a restful evening.

Friday, July 31 - Day Seventeen. Finally, a day off! We had no scheduled activities for today except for our travel briefing at 4:30. We both slept late, got up and just relaxed all morning taking care of emails and other administrative chores we had been putting off. It was again very smokey in the city. After lunch we went out to do some caching. Our first stop was the little town of North Pole, Alaska, which was just a couple miles South of our park. We stopped at the Santa Claus House which was a large Christmas shop. There was a Santa there (Jackie got to sit on his lap) and rooms full of Christmas ornaments and decorations. Outside they had a pen with a couple of reindeer in it and all kinds of Christmas stuff. There was also a 30 foot Santa Claus statue. The shop does a big business in postmarking letters from Santa with the North Pole postmark - that is the official name of the city. After visiting North Pole we did some caching in the local area and were able to find 10 caches in a couple of hours. It was good to get out and do some caching again. Tomorrow we head for Denali Park, about 125 miles. Another early start, about 8:30 a.m.

Saturday, August 1 - Day Eighteen. We started the day at what has become for us, a reasonable hour. We were out of the park about 8:30 a.m. For the first time in eighteen days we are headed South instead of North. Fairbanks was as far North as this trip is going to take us. We started down Alaska Route 3, the Parks Highway, which leads from Fairbanks to Anchorage. However, before going to Anchorage, we were going to make a three night stop at Denali National Park. Except for a few stretches with frost heaves and winter damage, the road is OK and there was not a lot of traffic. We did make one stop about 35 miles South of Fairbanks at a roadside business called Skinny Dick’s Halfway Inn. The place was supposed to be a restaurant/bar/gift shop and had been noted on Roadside America, the website that lists all the weird and unusual sights along the highways of America.. We check this website frequently when traveling because it lists some pretty funny and entertaining attractions. In keeping with its unusual name, Roadside America noted that there were all kinds of humorous sexually themed paraphernalia around the place. Unfortunately we found that the place was closed. We were disappointed.

The only other stop we made was at a service station about a mile before we reached the RV park. I wanted to top off the diesel in the coach since we had well over 200 miles to Anchorage after we left Denali. After filling up the tank I went in to pay and the owner of the station asked me to see if I could help a German couple who were having a problem with electric power in their rented Class C motorhome. They didn’t speak a lot of English, but I finally figured out that they had 12 volt power in the coach (the fridge, lights, etc.) when the engine was running, but nothing when the engine was turned off. I was pretty sure it had something to do with the house batteries either being dry or having some other issue. I finally figured out where there coach’s house batteries were kept, in a compartment in the stair well. When I took the cover I found that the cable which led from the isolator to the batteries had corroded through and come off one of the batteries. They were no longer connected so they weren’t being charged and weren’t providing power. I explained to the guy that he just needed to disconnect the other end of the short cable, take it into the station and buy a new one the same size, and connect it between the isolator and the battery. I then went in and explained the problem to the owner of the station too, so she could understand what they wanted. She wasn’t sure she had a cable, but said there was an auto supply store just a block down the road and they would have the part if she didn’t. That was my good deed for the day. Jackie thought I was being held for ransom by the station owner, but when I explained what I had been doing she thought it was a good thing too.

We got back on the road and headed the last mile to our RV park where our wagonmaster was waiting to park us. We ended up parking at the edge of a river canyon, facing the river and the mountainside on the other bank of the river. Five feet in front of the coach is the cliff which drops a couple hundred feet down to the river. On the other side of the river are the tracks for the railroad that runs between Anchorage and Fairbanks. This part of the river is rapids and the hillside on the other bank is all trees and grass. It is a spectacular view - one of the nicest we have had in an RV park. The park has 30 amp electric and water to the site, but no on-site sewer. This should not be a problem for the three days we are here. Interestingly, the electric is provided by a large generator - the park is not connected to the electrical grid, despite the fact that just a mile or two in both directions from the park are commercial business areas. I checked the voltage coming into the coach and it was 116 volts, so I guess his generator works OK.

We got into the RV park about 12:00 noon and by 1:40 we were on our way to our next activity - white water rafting! Although this was an optional activity, one which was not included as a part of our prepaid caravan, all but a handful of our group signed up to do it. We were going to raft the very river, the Nenana River, which runs below our coaches. Conveniently, the rafting company’s office was located at the other end of the parking lot of our campground, so we just all walked over there. After signing a waiver which essentially told us all sorts of horrible things that COULD happen to us, we were issued dry suits and life vests to put on. The dry suits were basically waterproof coveralls that we put on over our street clothes. We only had to take off our shoes. The suit has rubber booties built in and elastic rubber seals at the wrist and neck. We also had to put on external rubber boots just to protect the suit’s built in booties from being cut or damaged. The life vest went on over the dry suit. The suits are way big so as to fit over clothing and they fill with air, so if you don’t open the neck seal and squat down to push the air out, you end up looking like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. We all had a great laugh putting them on and looking at each other. The staff of the rafting company has to help you put the suit on because it is so cumbersome, and the seals are so tight, that you can’t do it by yourself. One funny note was that the name of the company that we were rafting with was “Denali Outdoor Center” so all of the vests were marked on the back, in big letters, “DOC”. With our dry suits, which sort of resembled jump suits, and our big orange vests with DOC on the back, we all looked like a road gang from the local prison.

They told us the reason we had to use the suits is because the water in the river is cold, 36 degrees Fahrenheit! The river is fed at its source by glaciers less than 50 miles upstream. They then loaded us onto an old school bus and took us a couple of miles up stream. After a safety briefing, we loaded into the boats and started down river. We were in what they called an “oar boat”, which meant that we didn’t have paddles - we were just passengers and there was one crew member who manned a set of oars in the middle of the boat. We also watched them load up several of the other type, “paddle boats” in which each passenger had a paddle and the crew member only sat in the back and served as the rudder. All of our group were in oar boats. We had seven in our boat. I sat in the front and Jackie sat in the back. The crew guy said the people in front would get wetter - he was correct! We went about 12 miles down river, about a two hour trip, and only had about eight areas of pretty good rapids, class II and III difficulty (out of a max of VI) so it wasn’t a very risky ride. But, we did hit some pretty good wave sets and we did get very wet - and the water was VERY cold. The suits did their job though, I stayed dry except for my head and hands, which got pretty cold. The air temp was probably in the high 60's and it was windy. Nonetheless, we had a great ride, it was a lot of fun, and we did a lot of screaming. Although they had briefed us on what to do if we were thrown out of the boat, or the boat tipped, only a couple of the areas of the ride had any potential for dumping anyone who was paying the least bit of attention to the ride. After the ride, they loaded us back on the old school bus and took us back to camp. Most of the group then sat around a campfire for an hour or so, with some snacks, and just chatted. This was the first place we have camped where the weather was decent enough, with no mosquitoes, to be able to sit outside, even for a little while. After the campfire we headed back to the coach for dinner and an early bedtime. Our next day’s adventure was scheduled to start at 6:30 a.m. Yikes.

Sunday, August 2 - Day Nineteen. We were up at 5:30 a.m. so we could catch a tour bus into Denali National Park at 6:30. Although we had the early morning drag, we were looking forward to the trip because we had heard from other Alaska travelers in the past about how wonderful the bus ride into Denali was - even if it did start so early. For some reason Jackie woke up with her left knee swollen and very painful to walk on. Not sure if she strained it or hit it on the boat ride the day before or what, but she was in pain. The tour bus, operated by the Park’s concessionaire, came right to our campground and picked us up. Two of our leaders stayed at the campground to take care of the group’s various dogs, because the trip would take anywhere from seven to nine hours. Our driver and guide was a very nice young lady named Cassandra. She drove to the park entrance where she stopped and filled the rest of the seats on the bus with other park visitors. We then headed into Denali National Park.

A few fast facts about Denali. Denali is the third largest National Park in the system with over 6.2 million acres. The first and second largest parks are also in Alaska. Until 1980 Denali was known as McKinley National Park, named for former President McKinley. There is only a single road in the park that goes about 100 miles West from the State Highway. The general public is only allowed to drive on the first 15 miles of that road. After that, only approved busses and vehicles operated by park employees or permitees are allowed on the road. Bicycles and hikers are OK if they have permits, but there are no trails in the park either, so hiking and biking are tough. The road is only open during the summer months, May through September. The park lies mainly in the Alaskan Mountain Range, a range which includes the highest mountain in North America, Mt. McKinley. Mt. McKinley is also known as Denali and both names are “officially” recognized. Denali is the a native word which means “great one”. The park is nearly 100 years old and has a variety of wildlife, some of which we hope to see on our trip.

After the 15 miles of public access road, the road into the park becomes gravel, so the bus only goes about 25 mph at most. The driver provided a briefing at which she told everyone on the bus that if anyone saw any wildlife they were to shout “stop” and she would stop the bus so everyone could maybe see whatever it was. She also stopped at a couple of preset rest areas which had toilets and areas where people could get out and stretch their legs. One of the sights she wasn’t sure we would see was Mt. McKinley itself. The mountain is deep within the park and the closest we could get to on the road was about 32 miles. In addition, at over 20,000 feet in elevation, the mountain was shrouded in clouds most of the time. She told us that portions of the mountain were only visible about 15 percent of the time, and the full mountain, including both peaks, less than 5 percent of the time. Nonetheless, we were hopeful because we were traveling on an unusually bright, blue sky day. As we drove West on the park road we would occasionally catch glimpses of the mountain in the distance and it appeared that only the very top of the mountain was covered in cloud. According to the guide we were going to be driving 62 miles into the park, to a point called Stoney Dome. At this lookout we would be within 32 miles of Mt. McKinley.

Along the way we made numerous stops for wildlife sightings. Among the animals we saw on our trip were a pair of lynx, the only member of the cat family within the park, moose, caribou, mountain sheep, a red fox, a wolf, a marmot, and various birds including ravens and golden eagles. One of the highlights was a fairly close (about a half mile) of a large grizzly bear and her two cubs. We sat and watched them for about 10 minutes. We saw them going in, and going out we saw them again on the other side of the road. We guessed it was the same family because they were in the same general area. One of the neat things on the bus was a video system. The driver had a good quality HD video camera with a great telephoto lens which she could train on the wildlife. The pictures were then broadcast inside the bus on overhead TV screens. We had a good pair of binoculars, so we could see the animals pretty well most of the time, but it gave the folks on the bus without binoculars a chance to see the animals close up in real time. A very neat idea. Of course later, towards the end of the trip, she tried to sell us a $35 DVD of the sightings. Oh well, capitalism at work.

When we reached the 62 mile point and turned the corner and had the full view of Mt. McKinley it was breathtaking. It seemed so close that you thought you could touch it. AND - we had a 5 percent day, the entire mountain was visible and there was almost no cloud on the top. That sight made the whole trip worthwhile. We had a nice group photo taken with the mountain in the background, along with everyone’s individual pictures. After viewing the mountain, we got back on the bus and headed back East along the same road. All in all, it was a very worthwhile trip, even if early and long. They provided sufficient stretch and pottie breaks, water on the bus and a snack box for each person so you wouldn’t starve. We had brought along some fruit also. Jackie’s leg was bothering her, so she didn’t get off the bus too often, but I know she enjoyed the trip anyway.

After dropping the other passengers off at the visitor’s center, the bus took our group back to the campground. Having started so early, we were not inclined to do a lot of socializing and just headed back to the coach. I ran out and got an Ace bandage and put it on Jackie’s knee, along with some ice, to help reduce the swelling. Hopefully, it won’t be anything serious and will clear up in a day or two. We had no organized activities for the next day until 5:30 when most of the group were going out to dinner and a show near the park entrance. We stayed at the coach and hit the bed early.

Monday, August 3 - Day Twenty. A Free Day! Yea! We got to sleep in, although 8:00 seems pretty late after all these early starts. We do have the luxury of leisurely drinking our morning coffee and waking up at our old modest pace. We have no TV or radio service here at all, so no morning news. We finally got up and out about 11:00 and headed into “town”, which is actually just the cluster of shops and resorts around the entrance to Denali National Park. The locals call this stretch of Highway 3 “Glitter Gulch” because of all the activity. Our first stop is the Denali Chalet Resort to get a partial refund on our tour tickets from the day before. Since the bus tour through the park was part of our tour, Larry, our wagonmaster, bought all the tickets. However, folks who hold Parks Service Golden Age Passports (like Jackie) can get into any National Park without paying the entrance fee. The $10 entrance fee is an included part of the bus tour ticket, so we found out if you go back to where the tickets were purchased you can get the entrance fee rebated back to you. When Jackie went to the desk they told her they don’t give cash rebates. She could get a check mailed to her in about 48 days or take a voucher for purchases in any of the park concessions. We took the two $10 rebates and went into the Chalet’s restaurant and had lunch. The voucher payed for about half the lunch.

After lunch we went into a couple of the clothing shops which all had “50% Off Sale” signs all over them. Our tour guide had told us the day before that the signs go up at the beginning of season and come down when they close in September. Permanent special sales. They had the usual selection of tee shirts, sweat shirts and jackets and such. I ended buying a fleece vest because I didn’t have any vests and thought I needed one. After wandering around the shops for a while we went geocaching. I had found a total of seven caches in the immediate area. We only cached about two hours, but we found four and had to take a DNF on one. We also got a couple of new Travel Bugs, which are items with unique serial numbers that can be moved from cache to cache and tracked.

We then headed back to the coach to relax for a while before our evening activity. We had a brief travel meeting with the group and then most of us drove back to Denali Chalet for a dinner and show called the “Denali Cabin Night”. This was not part of our tour package, we had to buy the tickets ourselves, but several people had recommended it as a good time. The event was held in a large, open log cabin with picnic tables set up inside. The staff were all dressed in 1920's garb and talked like I guess they thought Alaskan pioneers would, sort of a turn of the century hillbilly accent. The food was served family style and the wait staff played with the folks, halfway insulting, joking, that sort of thing. They served BBQ ribs, broiled salmon, corn, beans and salad. The food was quite good and there was no shortage. If one of the plates ran out, the server would bring more. After the dinner the wait staff turned into the entertainment staff. They sang some songs and told some stories about life in Alaska in the pioneer days. They also acted out a couple of Robert Service poems with some help from audience members. Every show we have gone to in both the Yukon and in Alaska have featured at least one Robert Service poem. He lived in the Yukon and Alaska at the turn of the century and wrote a lot of poetry. He is quite revered up here in the far Northwest. After the show we headed back to the coach to rest and get ready for our next travel day.

Tuesday, August 4 - Day Twenty-one. This was a long travel day so we wanted to get an early start. We were up and out of the park at 8:00 a.m. The day called for us to drive 240 miles South on Alaska Route 3 to Anchorage, Alaska. Anchorage is the largest city in Alaska, with almost 300,000 population. Jackie read that 42 percent of the population of Alaska lives in the Anchorage metro area.. The road was very good and for the first time in a while I was generally able to keep a 55 mph speed. One interesting sight was an old lodge, now closed, known only as "The Igloo". It was a large multi-story building shaped like an igloo. I guess it was the Alaska version of the old motels in Arizona that looked like teepees. We didn’t see a lot of wildlife, but about 70 miles into the drive we did see a small juvenile black bear run across the road. He was a little too fast getting into the trees for us to get a picture, but at least we saw a bear. The only other sighting we heard about was one of our party said they saw a moose. We had some really beautiful views of the Alaskan Mountain Range and Mt. McKinley on the drive. About 35 miles North of Anchorage we drove through the city of Wasilla, Alaska. This is a fairly small town made famous only as the home of Sarah Palin, former Governor of Alaska and recent Vice Presidential candidate. We looked for her on the way though, but did not get a Sarah sighting.

We pulled into the RV park about 1:30 and got settled in just before the rain started. The park is OK. The sites are not real large, but there are sewer hookups at each site. Unfortunately, there is no cable TV and the antenna only picks up a couple of the new digital stations off the air. Of course, we are still too far North for our satellite to work.. The first thing we did after getting the basic setup on the coach finished was take our clothes to the laundry. We had over two weeks worth of wash to catch up on. Fortunately, the park had a nice large laundry. I dropped Jackie and clothes off there and I headed to the airport to pick up our mail package at the UPS service center. It only took three days for it to get here from Pahrump, but that is because everything except very heavy freight is flown up here, even if you have it sent “ground”. This was not the infamous and well traveled mail package we tried to get while in Canada a month ago. That one is still out there somewhere, supposedly on its way back to Pahrump. After we finished the mail run and the laundry we had a caravan meeting just to sort out the activity schedules for the next couple of stops. The campground has a nice pavilion and they were going to have a band that night, but it was cold and raining and we didn’t feel like going outside. After the meeting we went back to the coach for dinner and just relaxed the rest of the night.

And that, dear readers, brings us to the end of the third week. We will be here in Anchorage for three days, then on to some of the Southern coastal towns of Alaska. I know we have a lot of great Alaskan adventures still ahead. Until our next post, remember to find the joy in life.

Our Alaska Caravan - Week Two

Our last episode covered the first week of our 48 day caravan through Canada and Alaska, and ended with us camping in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. This episode will encompass Week Two of our journey with Fantasy RV Tours.

Wednesday, July 22 - Day Eight. Today was our last day in Whitehorse, YT. We pretty much had a free day with no group activities until dinner. We did the laundry in the morning. They had a really nice laundry in the park. After lunch we had an opportunity to do an “Introduction to Geocaching” session with a member of our group. Joe and Tina are an interesting pair. Joe is a semi-retired businessman who grew up in Brooklyn, New York, but has lived in Texas for the last 23 years. He still sounds like he just walked off the streets of Flatbush. His traveling companion is Tina. Tina is from Uzbekistan, a former Soviet state in Central Asia. Although she grew up in the Soviet Union and Russian is her native tongue, she is of Korean descent. Both sets of Grandparents immigrated from Korea, on set from the North, one from the South. She is well educated and speaks good English, but with a heavy accent. Like many foreign English speakers, she sometimes has trouble with slang and idioms, but she is fun to talk to. Joe met Tina on the Internet and corresponded with her for some time. However, they only met in person about six weeks ago. Nonetheless, she agreed to accompany Joe on this trip and they seem to be doing quite well together.

Joe had expressed an interest in geocaching when we were talking about it at one of our group gatherings. He knew what the sport was, had registered on the official website and even bought a nice Garmin handheld GPSrx. However, he had never actually gone caching because he was unsure of the actual practice of caching. We told Joe that we would be happy to take him out and show him the ropes. Wednesday I selected four caches in the Whitehorse area that we could visit. Two of them were caches we had already found the day before and two were caches we had not yet located. I also selected different types and sizes of caches so we could give him a good overview. He downloaded the information into his GPSrx and off we went. We first did the two we had already found and let Joe find them. He did well. We then went off after the other two and found both of them also. Joe was very excited at his first four finds. I think we have a new geocache fanatic in our midst!

About 5:30 we got together with the group in the recreation hall at the RV park for a dinner. They had a prime rib buffet which was very nice, although the rib was a little dry and didn’t seem to have a lot of flavor. Nonetheless, we enjoyed ourselves and had some nice chat with other members of our group. Everyday we learn a little more about each other. After dinner we had our travel briefing for the next day’s trip from Whitehorse to Stewart Crossing, YT. We had a relatively early start scheduled, about 8:30, but our leader told us that we all needed to be out of the park by about 9:30 because we had three caravans in the park, all leaving in the morning and all heading North. The leaders of the caravans had gotten together and set a cooperative schedule so that all three caravans would not be on the same part of the road at the same time.

Thursday, July 23 - Day Nine. We managed to get up and out of the RV park just before 9:00 a.m. and started North towards our next stop at Stewart Crossing, about 225 miles. The scenery is pretty but the roads are continuing to get more challenging. The road on this part of the trip was narrower than earlier sections, and there were long sections with no shoulders, just a two foot drop-off. We also saw a lot more frost heaves and dips. Canada is pretty good about marking these rough sections with little orange flags or paint on the pavement, but you still have to be on alert because they don’t have them all marked. We also ran into a couple sections of construction where we only had a washboard gravel surface. One section was about 8 miles long and I thought my teeth were going to rattle loose. Another section was actually being worked on, so they had it watered and smoothed - it was actually smoother than some sections of the pavement!

Many of the group stopped about a third of the way to our destination at the Braeburn Lodge for cinnamon rolls. Cinnamon rolls seem to be a big deal up here, we have had stops for buns on several of legs so far. The rolls at this lodge were, by far, the largest I have ever seen. They were $8.50 but were at least 10 inches across and three inches tall. You could feed a family of four for a week with one bun. Well, maybe not, but they were big! We also saw our first coyote on the trip. I saw him trot across the road about a quarter mile in front of us, then he just stopped on the side of the road and watched us drive by. I talked later to Gary, who was a couple miles ahead of us, and he told me that the coyote was on the other side of the road watching them go by too. I guess he was just waiting for traffic to clear so he could cross the road. We also stopped for a photo opportunity at a roadside rest which overlooked the Yukon River at a rapids called Five Fingers. We had heard stories about this section of the river when we were at the SS Klondike museum. There are four large rocks in the middle of the river which splits the channel into five separate flows, or fingers. The riverboat captains had to figure out which of these channels were passable - and they were not very wide, only a few feet wider than the boats. This was apparently the most difficult hazard on the river between Whitehorse and Dawson City.

We arrived at our evening stop, Stewart Crossing mid afternoon and settled in. We were only going to be there one night and there were no sewer hookups, but we were prepared for that with empty waste tanks. The park also only had 15 amp power, which was no big deal to us - we have stayed with 15 amp service many times and as long as its not hot where you need A/C it’s no big deal. We had our travel briefing for the next day’s travel in the restaurant and afterwards Jackie and I stayed for dinner there. The food was quite good considering how far up in the boonies we are. Stewart Crossing isn’t even a town, only the lodge, restaurant and RV park on the banks of the Stewart River where the road crosses over the bridge. After dinner we stayed in the coach because the mosquitoes were pretty bad.

Friday, July 24 - Day Ten. This was to be a fairly short day, only 110 miles from Stewart Crossing to Dawson City. There wasn’t too much to see on the way up, the road was very narrow and in most places there were no shoulders, only a drop off of a couple of feet. The forest is close into the road so you don’t want to go too fast because you might get an animal jumping in front of you. The roads were also not in too good a shape. At one point we again had an eight mile stretch of gravel with the powdery dust. After a while we found that we tasted the grit in our mouths and had to drink water to rinse the dust out. Now I know what the old cowboys meant by trail dust! We didn’t see any animals on this leg of the trip.

We got into the Bonanza Gold RV park in the early afternoon and settled in. We are going to be in Dawson City for two nights. The park has full hookups, including sewer and cable TV. After getting set up we took a drive into town. Dawson City currently has a population of about 1,500 people, but during the gold rush years in the late 1800's and early 1900's the town had ten times that many people. The Klondike gold strike was the richest in history and prospectors flocked to the area. The town today is fairly small, and VERY frontier in nature. The streets are dirt and the sidewalks are wood. Most of the buildings in town date back to the gold rush years. When you drive around town you feel like you have gone back an hundred years. The town is right on the Yukon River and was one end of the riverboat route between Whitehorse and Dawson City back in the first half of the 20th century. Some of the riverboats actually ran all the way up to the early 60's when the road between Whitehorse and Dawson City (the one we just traveled) was finally built well enough for vehicle travel. We spent a couple hours in town, going through some of the shops and just admiring the quaintness of the town. We had a big lunch in one of the cafes with some other members of our group and after shopping headed back to the park to relax.

Saturday, July 25 - Day Eleven. This was a busy, crazy day in Dawson City, YT. Our tour leaders had a full day prepared for us, starting at 10:00 a.m. Our group gathered and carpooled up the Bonanza Creek road for a visit to “Gold Dredge #4". Bonanza Creek was the little creek where the original Klondike gold strike occurred. In the early days of the gold rush the mining was done by individual prospectors working small claims along the creeks and streams. The gold in this area was not hard-rock mining but rather was placer mining, which means the gold was already out of the rock and just lying relatively loose in the soil and streams. Individual prospectors panning in the streams could get fair amounts of gold, but they soon discovered that real money could be made by large scale mining. That is when they developed the gold dredge system. The dredge was a huge machine, mounted on a barge, that had a bucket line in the front which scooped up huge amounts of rock and soil, a huge sifter, shaker and sluice assembly in the middle that sorted out the heavier gold from the rock and soil, and a large chute in the back that spat out the leftovers, called tailings. The interesting thing was that the dredge floated in a large pond, but the pond moved with the dredge. It would dig out in front of it and fill in behind it, so the pond never got any bigger, it just moved up the valley. Dredge 4 was built in the 20's and is about eight stories tall and over 100 feet long. It actually worked the Yukon river valley for gold from the late 20's into the early 60's. It is now under the care of Canada Parks and is being restored. It was a very interesting visit. We learned a lot about gold mining from this tour. On the road driving up to the dredge we saw a gray fox trotting down the side of the road with a rabbit in his mouth! He didn’t slow down or go off the road, he just continued trotting past the whole line of about eight cars, looking at the cars as he went by. He appeared to all of us to be showing off, as in “Look at me, I got me a rabbit!”.

Later on in the afternoon we all carpooled into Dawson City to the Visitor’s Center for a walking tour of the city. Parks Canada has about a dozen different buildings in Dawson City that are either restored originals, or replicas, of turn of the century buildings. The tour took a couple of hours and was very interesting. We learned a lot about the history of Dawson City and life there in the early 1900's. The guide was very informative, and very funny and interesting too. We visited a restored bank, post office, saloon, store, and also saw a number of other restored and semi-restored structures. Very worthwhile couple of hours. After the tour most of the group went to a Greek (yes Greek) restaurant in town for dinner. The food was very authentic and VERY good. I would highly recommend the Drunken Goat Greek Restaurant to anyone who finds themselves in Dawson City looking for a place to eat. The owner even treated our group to a round of Ouzo after dinner!

After dinner we all went to Diamond Tooth Gertie’s Gambling Hall and Saloon. This was a real casino with slot machines, blackjack tables, poker and roulette. It was really funny because we were just about out of Canadian money after dinner because the Drunken Goat was cash only. This was our last real stop in Canada, so I wasn’t too worried about it, but we were running low. I got on a nickel slot machine and put in $10 and ended up cashing out $100! Jackie only lost $20, so we were up seventy bucks. Yea! We only gambled from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 when the show started. It was another old fashioned western song and dance show with Cancan dancers, similar to what we had seen in Whitehorse. But, it was a pretty good show and we enjoyed it. After the show the most of the group went up onto a bluff overlooking Dawson City. The bluff, called the Midnight Dome, was pretty cool with great views of Dawson City, the Yukon River and the surrounding wilderness.

After the trip up the dome Jackie and I went over to the Downtown Hotel and a bar called the Sourdough. We had heard about a “special” cocktail they had here which had a real mummified human toe in the drink. It was called the Sourtoe Cocktail and was kind of a local legend. We found the bar very busy and very entertaining. There were a couple dozen folks there trying to work up the nerve to do the Sourtoe. We ended up sitting with a couple of Canadian girls from Eastern Canada (Ottawa) who were out visiting. They were a real fun couple, Chantel and Melissa. We sat and drank with them for a couple of hours and all four of us ended up actually doing the Sourtoe. There is a whole ceremony that surrounds it, with a guy who is supposed to be an old riverboat captain letting you know that you are about to enter a special society of those brave enough to drink the sourtoe. He takes an old, ugly black mummified toe and rubs it on your face and then drops into your shot. You have to have something that is at least 80 proof. I had Jack Daniels, Jackie had Vodka. Then you have to chug the shot and the toe has to touch your lips. And he watches! He warns you, no chewing, no biting, no swallowing - just touch the lips! After you do it you get a special certificate welcoming you to the Sourtoe Cocktail Club. We had a blast and didn’t get back to the coach until almost midnight.

Sunday, July 26 - Day Twelve. Our original itinerary stated that we were going to be staying in Dawson City for three nights before moving on to Tok, Alaska. However, several days before our wagonmaster had proposed that we leave Dawson City on Sunday afternoon and travel part of the way to Tok, staying one night on the road at the “Top of the World” before continuing on. Several things need explaining here. There is a road that leads from Dawson City to Tok, that is called the “Top of the World Highway”. However, there is no bridge across the Yukon River at Dawson City. After Dawson City the road doesn’t go anywhere except to the US border, so I guess the Canadian Government doesn’t feel the need to build a bridge. The Canada highway department does operate a free ferry service to take you across the river, however, it is a very small ferry. Since there were a number of caravans in Dawson City, all planning on continuing on the Top of the World Highway on Monday, our wagonmaster thought it made more sense for us to go across the river on Sunday afternoon, when there would be very little traffic, rather than waiting until early Monday morning when there would be dozens of RV’s waiting to get across. Made sense to us and we had pretty much exhausted Dawson City’s fun anyway. So, about 1:00 p.m we packed up and headed into town and took the ferry across the Yukon. It still took over three hours for all twelve of our caravan’s rigs to get across. The plan was to drive about 50 miles towards Tok, Alaska, to an area that the wagonmaster had already scouted as a good one night overnight place big enough for our whole group. This would put us only about 15 miles from the US-Canada border station on the Top of the World Highway. The Top of the World Highway was MAGNIFICENT! There was a lot of dirt and gravel stretches, some of which were pretty rough and dusty, but the scenery was outstanding. The road climbed up out of Dawson City and then went along the tops of the ridges of the mountains with shear drops on either side. The going was slow, and sometimes uncomfortable, but well worth the trip. The spot that Larry had chosen for our night stay was large and flat and we all got in and set up by about 6:30 p.m. Larry then did a great hot dog cookout and we had a wonderful time. We went to bed fairly early because we had an early start the next day. Although the next day’s travel was only about 150 miles, Larry told us it was VERY rough, VERY bad road. He wanted us at the border crossing soon after they opened at 8:00 a.m. Canadian time. Alaska has it’s own time zone, an hour later than Pacific time.

Monday, July 27 - Day Thirteen. Day thirteen, how appropriate. We were up and out at 8:00 in the morning, not because we had a long way to go - Tok, Alaska, our destination, was only about 150 miles. It was because Larry told us it would be the worst 150 miles we had ever driven. After driving about 15 miles Northwest from our night’s encampment, we came to the US-Canada border. This was how I would picture a border station in Manchuria. We drove up to a large green metal building where a Canadian flag flew on one side and the US flag on the other. We were driving on a narrow road on a mountain ridge. There were few trees, mostly just windswept wilderness. Other than the couple of cabins for the border guards and the station itself, there were no other signs of civilization as far as one could see. The border crossing was very easy, the US agent took our passports, asked us about booze, guns and animals, and sent us on our way. The agent was very pleasant. We had drunk most of our Canadian bought liquor, so I told him that we only had a couple liters of leftovers that we had brought with us from the states. He asked about the cat’s rabies certificate, but didn’t want to see it when I offered. We were through the gate and back into the USA within 5 minutes.

Once into the US we had about 100 yards of pavement leading West from the border station and then the road turned to dirt and gravel. The next 85 miles were just as Larry told us - the worst roads I have ever driven the coach on. I would have been reluctant to drive the Jeep on some of the stretches, but we had no choice but to go on. The dust rolled on and into the coach, everything rattled and banged inside the coach, and we were only driving 15 mph. After about two and a half hours we finally arrived in Chicken, Alaska. This was a badly needed - and pretty entertaining - break. Chicken is a town of about 35 or so in the middle of the Eastern Alaska wilderness. There is a store and service station right on the road, and then “Beautiful Downtown Chicken”, as they advertise it, is about a half mile down a side road. Our leaders, Larry and Doug, unhooked their tow cars and ferried people into “downtown” which consisted of three connected wooden buildings containing a souvenir shop, a restaurant and a bar. It was all very quaint and interesting. At least now we can claim to have been in Chicken, Alaska.

A short couple miles after Chicken the road finally became paved again. Although there were a few torn up areas and gravel sections, it was like driving on a superhighway compared to the portion between the border and Chicken. We finally arrived in Tok, Alaska. We were also once again on the Alaska highway. Tok is the first major settlement on the Alaska highway after the border crossing on that road. Tok is not very large, probably 1,500 but we had a pretty nice RV park with full hookups. Everyone stopped at the fuel station across the street from the park because if you filled your tank there you got a free wash at the RV park. Larry told us that the tradition was that everyone filled their tanks, came across the street to the RV wash and got in line. Then everyone from the caravan that was there grabbed a brush or hose and cleaned all the Rv’s as they passed through. The wash was really only a concrete pad with two lanes and two high pressure hoses, a bunch of brushes and some buckets. But it was good to finally get the dust and dirt off of the coach. The amount of dust was unbelievable. It only took an hour or so for all the rigs to get at least a reasonable cleaning. After we parked I had to run down to the auto parts store to buy two new headlights for the Jeep. Both lights had been broken out by rocks on our trip over the Top of the World. The windshield has only had a couple nicks, no chips, cracks or stars yet, but the lights were smashed. Fortunately, our car is old enough to still use sealed beams, so it only cost me $20 and a half hour of time to replace the lights. After fixing the car we went to a local restaurant, Fast Eddie’s, for a quick dinner and then back to the coach. I was completely exhausted, mentally and physically, from the day’s drive and the cleaning and fixing afterwards. I was in bed and asleep by 9:30, which was actually 10:30 Pacific time.

Tuesday, July 28 - Day Fourteen. We left Tok about 8:30 a.m. and headed Northwest on the Alaska Highway again, destination Fairbanks, Alaska. This was a 200 mile trip, but Larry told us that it was pretty decent highway all the way, only a few areas of frost heaves to watch for. We did see a bunny rabbit (this one NOT in a fox’s mouth) and one moose on the side of the road. We found out later that some of the other caravan members saw several moose and a bear, but we only had the one moose. We also had a bird strike - the bird zigged instead of zagging and wacked the top front of the coach. I don’t think that counts as an animal sighting though. About halfway through the trip we reached Delta Junction which marks the official “end” of the Alaska Highway. In 1942 the crews who were working and building the highway Southbound started here, while the Northbound crews started in Dawson Creek, BC. The point where the two crews met is at Beaver Creek, BC on the part of the Alaska Highway we bypassed when we took the Top of the World route. We will see that later on in the trip when we start back out of Alaska.

We stopped at the visitor’s center in Delta Junction and had our picture taken at the marker showing the official end point of the Alaska Highway. We then drove a couple more miles and stopped at the crossing of the Chena River for our first view of the Alaska pipeline. We will learn more about the pipeline later, so I will provide more details in another blog. We had lunch there and continued on towards Fairbanks. Just before we got to our RV park we drove though the community of North Pole. Needless to say, there was a giant santa and a lot of Christmas themed stores. We will probably visit that on one of the days we are in Fairbanks. We arrived at our RV park about 2:30 or so and got settled in. It was a very easy drive this time. We had full hookups, which was good because were scheduled to be there for four days.

We didn’t get to relax too long because at 6:30 p.m. there was bus waiting to take our group to the Fairbanks Alaska Salmon Bake. This is a huge operation located in Pioneer Park, a sort of frontier theme park in Fairbanks. It was an all you can eat buffet with prime rib, salmon, halibut and cod for main dishes, along with a huge salad bar, desert and soft drinks. Although it was included as part of our trip, Jackie did notice the price was $31 per person. All of the food and cooking was outdoors in a very large venue. Most of the seating was also outside, although they did have an indoor section. There weren’t many mosquitoes, so we sat outside at a large table. The food was very good and we both ate way too much. While we were eating a group of five younger people asked if they could sit at our table. We chatted with them and it turns out they were all from the Sacramento, California area and were Air Force reservists. They had been sent up to Eielson AFB for their two week active duty deployment. The base is only about 20 miles South of Fairbanks. We had passed the base on the way to Fairbanks and had seen a B-1 bomber parked on one of the taxiways. There are a lot of military in Fairbanks because there is also a large Army base, Fort Wainwright, which is right next to our RV park.

After dinner our leader walked us all over to another part of Pioneer Park to the Palace Theater where we had another turn of the century type vaudeville show. The material was different from the other two we have seen, but the theme and general tone of the show were the same. After a while they all start to look pretty much the same. After the show we got back on the bus and back to the RV park where we pretty much crashed for the night. We had a big day scheduled for Wednesday - the bus was scheduled to pick us up at 8:00 a.m. and Larry said not to expect to return until after 6:00 p.m. Yikes - we are going to have to rest up after this vacation!

Well folks, that concludes Week Two of our 48 Day Alaska Caravan. We are here in Fairbanks for another three days, then on to Denali National Park and Anchorage. I will try to post Week Three as quickly as I can given the full schedule of events our leaders have planned for us. Until then, “Hush you Muskies - no wait, Mush you Huskies.”

Our Alaska Caravan - Week One

Wednesday, July 15th - Day One. The first “official” day of our caravan. We started with a pancake breakfast hosted by our Wagonmasters, Larry and Evelyn, and our Tailgunners, Doug and Linda. These are the staff for our caravan. The Wagonmaster is in charge of everything and is always the first out in the morning. The Tailgunner is responsible for bringing up the rear of the caravan and normally leaves about 90 minutes after the Wagonmaster. The idea is to travel somewhere in between the two. We learned all this at our first briefing which was held at 2:00. The staff told us that we could leave whenever we wanted, but if we left after the scheduled time for the tailgunner, we wouldn't have anyone behind us in case of problems. We decided that we would try to always be in the middle of the pack.

After our 2:00 briefing we all headed down to the center of Dawson Creek to the official “Mile Zero” milepost to have a group picture taken. There is a stone cairn marking the spot where they started the Alaskan Highway in 1942. After the photo we all headed to the George Dawson Lodge for our welcome dinner. George Dawson was an early surveyor for the highway and both Dawson Creek and Dawson City are named for him. The dinner was a very nice buffet of beef and chicken. After the dinner we had a presentation by one of the docents from the Dawson Creek visitor's center giving us the history of the Alaska Highway. Until WWII, there was no road between Alaska and the U.S, or even most of Canada. There were a series of airports, but no roads. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor the military decided we needed to build a road to Alaska for defense purposes. Within a few months they had sent nearly 10,000 troops and civilian contractors to Dawson Creek, which had a permanent population of about 400 at the time. Within 18 months they had created a 2,500 mile highway from Dawson Creek to Fairbanks. She had a lot of cool old pictures from the early 40's of the road and it's construction. Of course, at that time it was all dirt and gravel.

After the presentation the wagonmaster had everyone in the caravan do basic introductions. We have a total of thirteen rigs traveling with us. This includes the Wagonmaster and Tailgunner, so there are eleven customer rigs. All but two are motorhomes. We have one single traveler, Lindsey, who has a pickup truck with a big camper. Her husband, a Marine aviator, died about a year ago and she has decided to continue to travel. They also own a large bus motorhome, but she hasn't learned to drive it yet, so she took the camper on this trip. We also have one couple, Dave and Connie, who have a 30 ft. fifth wheel. Five of the couples on the trip also went with Larry on the caravan to the Calgary Stampede just before coming up to Dawson Creek. We have one couple in a Newell, Steve and Betty, who are on their sixth trip with Fantasy Tours. The rest of us are in an assortment of Class A motorhomes ranging from 27 ft. to 42 ft. Our Tailgunner has a Monaco Knight, a year newer than ours, but with the same floor plan.

One couple on the tour, Gary and Delena, had actually met some other friends of ours in Indiana at a service center earlier in the year. They met Ken and Bonnie Woepke and Ken realized that Gary and his wife were going on the same trip as us. Bonnie had emailed that information to us so we were really looking forward to meeting them. Turns out that Gary looks a lot like my best friend Barry Cohen, so it will be real easy for me to remember his name. (Barry – Gary) One of the couples in our group are from Canada, the rest are from the States. Only a couple of them are fulltimers like us. Almost all of the group are “baby boomer” generation and everyone seems to be very nice. I think we are going to have a good time. After the dinner we went back to the park for the rest of the night. Our trip tomorrow (Thursday) is going to be long, we are going 284 miles from Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson, B.C.

Thursday, July 16th – Day Two. We managed to be up at 6:00 and on the road by 8:00. We made a quick stop for fuel just North of Dawson Creek and then headed up the Alaska highway. This part of the highway is in very good condition and we traveled through mostly forested land. One of the interesting things about traveling the Alaska Highway is the “animal sightings” as you travel. Everyone keeps track or animals seen and shares the sightings at the end of the day. Our first day of travel we saw one large bull moose, a black bear with two cubs, a large male black bear, and a couple of deer. Fortunately, all were well off the road, or were visible from a far enough distance to be able to slow down. Just about everyone on the road slows or stops when there is wildlife on the side of the road. Makes it pretty easy to avoid them. Although the road was pretty good, we did run into a major thunderstorm while on route. Fortunately there is not a lot of traffic on the road, so you just slow down and keep on traveling when the rain hits. We got into Fort Nelson about 3:00 and settled into the RV park with the help of our Wagonmaster. The RV Park, Westend RV Campground, was kind of a dump, but we were only going to be here one night. The spaces were pretty tight, but we got in without too much difficulty. We at least have 30 amp and sewer, which are the “gold standard” for RV parks up in the North Country. We decided not to bother putting the living room slide (road side front) out for the “one night stands”. We have been having some problems getting this slide in due to a weak motor, so we thought we would just not bother.

We had a brief travel meeting at 5:00 where we discussed tomorrow's travel. We are leaving Fort Nelson, B.C. for Liard Hot Springs. After the briefing we headed down to the Boston Pizza restaurant in town for dinner. We took Dave and Connie with us because they didn't want to have to disconnect their truck from the trailer. We have seen Boston Pizza stores all over Canada, but this was the first time we have gone to one. The pizza was very good. I took enough home for lunch the next day. After dinner we stopped at the Fort Nelson Elks Lodge, which happened to be only a couple of blocks from the RV Park. This is one of the few Canadian Elks that has a bar. The four of us went in and had a drink and chatted a little with the bartender. We were also able to get a lodge pin, so they will be on our banner. Yea! After this cocktail we headed back to the coach for the night. We had no satellite, I think that is over until we are finished with the Alaska trip. We did have cable, so we were able to at least watch a couple of shows before we went to bed.

Friday, July 17th – Day Three. Today's drive was 191 miles from Fort Nelson, B.C. to the Laird River Hot Springs Provincial Park. We got out about 9:15 in the morning. We think we may be getting used to this early start stuff. Shortly after leaving the park we stopped buy fuel. This is the first time since we have been in Canada where the price of diesel has been over $1.00 per liter. Oh well, we knew fuel would not be cheap. On this part of the trip we were again mostly in rolling forested hills, but there were a couple of times when we had to stop for road construction. We were into some of the conditions I have heard people talk about regarding Alaska trips. We ran into two separate areas where we had to drive through construction on gravel surfaced roads. They had the traffic blocked so you only had one direction at a time going through the area following a pilot car. In both sections the white dust was so bad I couldn't see the road five feet in front of me. The actual road surface was slightly rough, but it didn't matter because we could only drive about 15 miles per hour anyway because of the dust. Because there is only traffic in one direction, you don't have to worry about rocks in the windshield. That was always the big fear about traveling on the Alaska Highway. One portion of the construction area went through a beautiful canyon and we were able to see a couple small herds of Stone Sheep, a small relative of the Bighorn Sheep. Fortunately, this section was packed dirt without much dust so we got some good photos of the sheep. After the construction areas we stopped for lunch at the Toad Creek Lodge, about halfway to Laird Hot Springs. We had lunch in the lodge with a couple of other rigs from our caravan. We were amazed at the amount of dust on - and in - our rigs from driving through the construction areas. The back of our motorhome was completely white with dust, as is the car. The lunch at the lodge was great, Jackie had a buffalo burger! I bought a cool tee shirt and we hit the road again. On the way we did see our first caribou on the side of the road. About the size of an elk, but lighter in color with a different type of antlers.

We arrived at our destination about 3:00 p.m. Tonight we are staying in one of the British Columbia Provincial Parks. Surprisingly, we found the park to be very nice - large sites in a very pretty woodsy area. We had no hookups at all, totally dry camping, but we were only here one night and we had made sure we came with empty waste tanks and plenty of water on board. One of the reasons our leaders decided to stay at this park is that it has some natural hot springs right inside the park boundaries. After we got settled in I put on my bathing suit and headed to the springs. They were very nice - the park had built a wood walkway through the swamp to the springs, and then had wood steps going into the water. They had also put gravel on the bottom of the natural pools so it was very comfortable. At the spring end of the pool the water had to be at least 115 degrees. The further away from the source you went the cooler the water got. I stayed in the part that was probably about 107, what a regular hot tub would be. The water was slightly sulfur smelling, but not so bad that it was uncomfortable. Jackie didn't feel like going to the springs, so I was there with a couple of other folks from the caravan. After the hot springs I went back to the coach and we played a couple of games of cards before heading to bed. We didn't have a full travel meeting tonight because the mosquitoes were so bad in the park. You could hardly go outside without being swarmed, even with repellent on. Larry, or leader came around and just told us that we would be leaving the park tomorrow morning between 8:30 and 10:00 a.m. heading to Watson Lake, Yukon Territory (Y.T.)

After arriving in Laird Hot Springs we learned that one couple from our group, Terry and Janis, had experienced major problems with their coach just before arriving at the park. They have an Tiffin Allegro with a Ford gas engine and they think that they may have broken a rod in the engine. They had just bought the coach new before the trip and it had less than 7,000 miles on it when it quit. We learn that they have been able to make arrangements to get towed from Laird Hot Springs into Whitehorse, Y.T. tomorrow morning. We will be heading to Whitehorse after one other stop. They hope to be able to get the problem fixed and rejoin the caravan later in the trip. We are all keeping our fingers crossed.

Saturday, July 18th - Day Four. We were up and out of the park about 9:00 and found that we were the last people out except for the Tailgunner who was not scheduled to leave until 10:00. We were driving only 135 miles today to Watson Lake, Y.T. Again, the road was pretty good. We didn't run into any major construction today. We have heard tales about the bad roads up in the Yukon and Alaska - so far, except for the construction areas yesterday, we have not experienced anything worse than what you see in California as far as roads. The frost heaves are generally just minor bumps. We have found that because of the bumps, the possibility of animals on the roads, and the hills and so forth, that we are only driving between 50 and 55 most of the time. This actually makes for very leisurely driving. I get a chance to enjoy the scenery for a change. There is very little traffic on the road, despite it being the only road in the area.

On this leg of the trip we ran into several herds of wild buffalo grazing along the road, and sometimes crossing the road. We got some good pictures. We also saw our first grizzly bear on the side of the road. Much bigger than the black bears we have seen and a different color, more of a reddish blond color.

Today we finally crossed from British Columbia into the Yukon Territory. We crossed the border a couple of times as the road zigzagged, but we finally came to the "official" welcome sign. We arrived in Watson Lake about 1:00 in the rain. This was a pretty decent campground with pull through spots and full hookups. Watson Lake is our first town in the Yukon Territory and it is the home of the famous "Sign Post Forest." The Forest is just a block from our campground so several of us walk over to look at it and post our caravan's sign. It is very hard to describe the sign post forest. It is a couple of acres of 8 ft. 4X4 posts with every type of sign you can think of. At last count there were over 64,000 individual signs in the forest. Larry put up a sign that had all the names of the folks on our caravan so we are now a part of the forest. Jackie and I have decided that we will put up our own sign when we come back through Watson Lake near the end of the caravan.

Unfortunately, after arrival at the park we learned that another couple from our group, Dave and Connie, broke the springs on their fifth wheel and were going to be stuck in Watson Lake for at least three days while they wait to get it fixed. They hope to be able to get finished and rejoin the caravan in Whitehorse. We will be there for three days, so hopefully they can get the repairs made and get back on the caravan.

Our dinner tonight was at the RV park and was advertised to us as a "low country boil". It turns out that Steve and Betty, the couple with the Newell, are from Georgia and carry a huge pot and propane cooker with them. This is the couple that have been on a number of caravans. Dinner was held in a large tent near the office. When we get there we found a bunch of tables inside the tent with Georgia newspaper set out as place mats and this huge pot boiling just outside the tent. Inside the pot are shrimp, sausage, white potatoes, sweet potatoes and corn on the cob. There must be 30 pounds of food in the pot. After we all get settled they strain the food, dump it out on a table, and let everyone go through and help themselves. The food was FANTASTIC and there was more than enough for everyone. Jackie and I both ate until we were well fed! One of the best meals we have had. After the meal we had a short travel brief for tomorrow's travel from Watson Lake, Y.T. to Teslin, Y.T. After that Jackie and I headed back to the coach, watched a little bit of TV (we had cable hookups at this park) and then headed off to bed ready to travel our next leg.

Sunday, July 19th - Day Five. We were up and out of the park by about 9:15 again. It would be nice to be able to sleep in, but with these one day stops we don't get the chance. The drive from Watson Lake, Y.T. to Teslin, Y.T. was only 163 miles. The roads were good with few major bumps and no construction except for a couple of bridges where we were held up for only a couple minutes. Most of the trip is through forest, but we also had great views of the rivers and lakes that dot the landscape. About halfway through the drive we did see a large Bald Eagle. He was flying straight down the road in front of us, then landed near the shoulder. We had a really good view of him. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the camera up in time to get a photo. We didn't see any other animals the whole day - very disappointing. We saw a couple of places where there was piles of poop on the shoulder, but no animals. Probably either bison or some of the wild horses that inhabit the area.

Just before we get into Teslin, our stop for the night, we crossed over Teslin Lake on a long bridge. The bridge was built in the 40's and is the longest bridge on the Alaska highway. The park we are staying in tonight is pretty nice with pull-through spots. We had water and electric, but no sewer or TV. We were only going to be there one night, so no big deal. We were in and settled by about 2:00 p.m., so we unhooked the car and drove around the area to do some sightseeing. I checked to see if there were any geocaches in the area and there were none. We went to the George Johnson Museum, which was located right in town. This was a very interesting stop. George Johnson was a Tlinket Indian who lived in Teslin. George happened to be a photographer, so he has photos of the people and activities in the area from about 1902 well into the 1950's. He was a very successful trapper and brought the first automobile into the area in 1928. There were no roads anywhere, he had the car brought in by boat. He used it primarily in the winter when Teslin Lake froze and he was able to drive on the ice and service his traps. The lake is 68 miles long and a couple miles wide, so he had a huge road in the winter. There were no real roads in this area until the Alaska Highway came through in 1942.

After the museum we drove about 6 miles North of town on the highway to visit the site of the infamous Mukluck Annie's Almost anyone I have talked to about travel to Alaska has mentioned Mukluck Annie's They had a restaurant that served a salmon bake - if you ate in the restaurant you could stay in the RV park for free. (without electric, that was extra) You also got a free RV wash. Unfortunately, we found the place closed. The story we heard from our Wagonmaster was that the owner was an older lady who finally had to give the place up. After a little touring of the town we headed back to the coach to rest for tomorrow's trip.

Monday, July 20 - Day Six. Today we left Teslin for Whitehorse, Y.T. The trip was only about 106 miles so we expected to get in early. We got out of the park in Teslin about 9:30 and headed North. This was a very easy drive but again, we didn't see any animals. We did see at least a half dozen hardy souls on bicycles, most headed South. I would imagine that it takes a long time to do the Alaska Highway on a bike, so they probably get an early start. We have also seen a lot of motorcycles on the highway. I guess it would be a great adventure, but we sure feel sorry for the cyclists, both types, when it is raining. Not my cup of tea. We got into Whitehorse about 1:00 p.m. and parked pretty quickly after getting some fuel. The fuel island is right in the middle of the RV park so you can just stop there as you pull into the park. The spots are a little tight, but we were able to get all the slides out and we have full hookups, including TV and Internet. We are going to be here for three days. Yea! This is the first stop on the trip that is not a one night stand. The original plan was for us to have a dinner in the rec room at the park, however, after everyone got in the Wagonmaster told us that the dinner was canceled because someone else had the room. The dinner was rescheduled for Wednesday night, our last night here.

Since we had the rest of the day free, we downloaded some caches and went geocaching for the first time in nearly a week. We were able to find five caches in a couple hours and saw some interesting places in Whitehorse. Whitehorse is the capital of the Yukon Territory and its largest city, with about 25,000 people. The book said that two-thirds of the population of the Yukon lives in Whitehorse. There is a really cute old-timey downtown area along Main Street that looks like it would be fun to explore. One of the caches was by the airport and there was a 737 sitting at the gate, so we know they have major air service. They also have what they claim to be the world's biggest wind vane. They have an old DC-3 mounted on a pole and it swivels with the wind. We also located the Elks Lodge, right in the downtown area, and it appears that they have a bar. We didn't have time to stop there today because we had made arrangements to meet with some members of our group at Klondike Salmon and Ribs, a pretty well known restaurant in Whitehorse. I had the fish and chips which was huge and very good. Jackie was not too hungry and had a bowl of Halibut chowder, which she said was tasty. The menu was interesting in that they had some unusual dishes. They had Caribou stew, Musk Ox stroganoff, and a couple of other items not seen on the average restaurant menu. After dinner we headed back to the coach to relax. Tomorrow we have to be up and ready at 8:30 for a bus tour of Whitehorse. Then for tomorrow night we have tickets to go to a follies-type show in town. They keep you busy on these caravans. We hit the bed about 11:00 p.m., pretty much our normal time - it is still daylight outside! We figure that right now we have about 5 hours a night of darkness. The sun didn't go down below the horizon tonight until about 10:00. p.m.

Tuesday, July 21 - Day Seven. Even though today was not a travel day we still have to roll out of bed early because we had an 8:30 a.m. bus tour of Whitehorse. Our first stop was a bluff overlooking the Yukon River where we took some group photos. The people from our caravan were the only ones on the bus, so the bus driver was pretty open to whatever we wanted to do. Our next stop was the Whitehorse fish ladder. There is a dam on the Yukon River just South of Whitehorse which provides electrical power for the surrounding region. This is the only dam on the Yukon, and it is 3,000 miles from the mouth of the river in the Bering Sea. None the less, there are still some salmon that swim all the way up to rivers and creeks upstream from the where the dam is. In order for these salmon to get past the dam, there has to be a fish ladder. The Canadian government has on-site biologists who count the fish - there are actually very few, less than a thousand per year, that come up this far. We didn't see any salmon in the ladder because they are not due for another couple of weeks. Jackie wanted to ask the biologist how the salmon can climb the ladder without thumbs.

Our next stop on the tour was the SS Klondike, a restored stern wheeler riverboat which is now a museum. The Klondike was built in 1921 and is nearly 300 feet long. It ran aground and partially sunk in 1935, but the upper deck works and machinery were salvaged and the ship was rebuilt and relaunched in 1937. It ran multiple trips up and down the Yukon River, from Whitehorse to Dawson City every summer until 1955 when the new Alaskan Highway put the riverboats out of business. In the 60's the City of Whitehorse brought the boat from the boat yards, where it had languished since '55, to the downtown area where it was restored as a museum. We spent about an hour touring the boat - it was very interesting. There were several riverboats on the Yukon, but the Klondike was the largest. After the Klondike tour we stopped briefly at the Whitehorse visitor center and then took a short driving tour of Whitehorse.

After the the bus dropped us off back at the RV park we decided to go spend the afternoon in Whitehorse just exploring. We were scheduled to attend a show downtown at 8:00 p.m., so we thought we would spend the day in town and just meet the group there. We spent a couple of hours walking around on Main Street looking in the various shops and then did some driving around the town, looking at the various neighborhoods. We also went out and found one more geocache to add to our total. About 4:00 we went by the Whitehorse Elks Lodge and visited the bar - yes, this one had a bar. There were two other people in the bar, besides the bartender. One of them was the Secretary of the Lodge and we got to talking to him about the Lodge. He told us there are 32 members of the Lodge! The only way the Lodge can stay open is their bingo hall - they have bingo six days a week in the summer and have eight sessions per week in the winter. He also told us that Whitehorse has the only Elks Lodge in the Yukon Territory. We did manage to get a nice pin from the lodge. After the Elks we went by the Royal Canadian Legion, also located right in downtown Whitehorse. This was probably the most fun Legion we have been in since coming into Canada. We walked in the door and there were about eight people sitting around a big table drinking. One of the guys at the table told us that it was the bullshit table and to sit down and make ourselves comfortable. We sat down and visited with a bunch of folks. Jackie got to talking to one middle aged lady who it turns out is active duty Canadian military home on leave. She is in the medical corps and due to go back to Afghanistan in October. Jackie said that she reminded her of her friend Julie from Sacramento. We had a couple of drinks and had a great time. Unfortunately, they didn't have a branch pin for our banner.

After the Legion we went to a local Mexican restaurant, Sam & Andy's, which is new in town and had been recommended by the gal Jackie had been talking to in the Legion. We got there about 6:00 and there weren't too many people there. We ordered a drink and some calamari, which came pretty quickly. We then ordered dinner, steak and chicken fajitas for two. Time went by, the place started filling up and pretty soon we noticed that some people who had come in long after us were getting food and we didn't have any yet. After about 45 minutes we asked the waitress how long our food was going to be. She said she'd check, and when she came back she was all flustered and told us she had forgotten to put our order in! After another 20 minutes she finally brought the food out, and it was just chicken - no steak fajitas. Although the food was not too bad, it certainly wasn't good enough to offset the incredibly poor service. At least they did take the appetizer and one of Jackie's drinks off of the bill. We wouldn't recommend Sam & Andy's.

We managed to finish dinner just in time to get over to the hotel where we were meeting the rest of our group for the show. The show is called the Frantic Follies and it is an old-time vaudeville show of the type that would have been popular in the late 1800's when the Yukon gold rush was on. Nearly all of the players were locals and a couple of them were still in high school. It turns out they were very entertaining, if a little corney sometimes. They had some Cancan dancers, played and sang some old songs, and had some hysterically funny comedy skits. A couple of them involved bringing audience members up to the stage, and one them picked Jackie, who happened to be sitting in an aisle seat. They put her in a chair on stage while a couple of the performers sang a love song to her. She went along with the gag perfectly and the audience loved the act. The show lasted a couple hours and was very good. I don't know what the cost is, because it was included as part of our tour, but I would recommend it if you find yourself in Whitehorse with an open evening. We got out of the show at 10:15 p.m. and the sun had just gone down. It was still light enough that I drove back to the RV park without having to use my headlights!

Although we have one more day in Whitehorse, this was the end of the first week of our caravan. I will be posting the second week of our adventures in about seven days, providing we have decent Internet. Until then, peace and love!