The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales

Day 15 July 20 The Discovery

Sometimes popular tourist attractions are popular for a reason. The Riverboat Discovery is just such an attraction. I’m glad we chose it to be one of the extra excursions we would do while in Alaska. I’m going to quote from the Milepost here:

“Owned and operated by the Binkley Family, whose riverboating experience spans four generations and more than 100 years, the Riverboat Discovery tour has been rated on of the top boating attractions in North America. Captain Jim Binkley and his crew of children, grandchildren and native Alaskans take you back to the heyday of sternwheelers, to an era when prospectors, fur traders, and Native people of the Interior relied on rivers as their only link to the outside world”

We drove to the parking lot on the western edge of town along the Chena River, once again inundated with row after row of buses from the cruise lines, mainly Holland America and Princess. I’m not sure how many people could be on the boat, but there were hundreds of people lining up to board and filling the huge gift shop at the entrance. I am glad that I purchased my tickets online last night from the comfort of my motorhome. This is definitely a very big very much tourist attraction. There were very few cars parked in the lot, and most of the passengers were from the cruise buses. We took the 2PM cruise because the 8:45 was booked solid, so I’m just glad we were able to at least get a sailing.

The boat trip was great. We followed blogger advice and took a left side seat on the third deck out in the open. I didn’t have a sweater and the sun was warm even on the river. Even though there are excellent video screens conveniently placed all around the boat, we were on the side of the bush plane take-off and a special highlight, on the side of the visit to Susan Butcher’s kennels where her husband and his daughters brought out the dogs for a sled dog demonstration. It was wonderful to see how happy those sled dogs are and how excited they get when it’s time to pull the sled. He hitched a team up to a non motorized 4 wheeler, and they raced around the roadways and burst back out onto the lawn going full speed before his shouted “Whoa” stopped them instantly. Amazing. I read all the stories about Susan, her strength and love of the dogs, and about her death to cancer. Her name always brought up something inside about what women can do, powerful women. It was a special treat to see her kennels and her husband. Her famous dog, Granite, passed on not long before Susan, but we saw a memorial to him as well in the village later.

After the dogs, the boat went downriver to the confluence with the broad, braided, wide path of the Tanana River, the largest glacially fed river in North America, in fact, I think they said in the world. It was filled with silt and debris and the current looked rough and tricky. I wouldn’t want to put a boat in that river! The boat turned and we pulled alongside the Chena Village, a replica of course, but still a place that felt very special with the young women from the Athabascan tribe telling the stories of what their life was like before the coming of the white man.

It was a lovely place, with a fish camp, and sod roofed cabins, smokehouse, and a cache, in addition to the Susan Butcher cabin and memorial to Granite, who won the Iditarod for her four times. We learned a bit about how the people caught and processed salmon, how they made their clothing, and saw some beautiful examples of parkas, dresses, and even the girls wearing what they referred to as “summer parkas”.

Once back on the boat we continued back toward the landing, passing the home of the Binkleys, where the matriarch of the family came out to wave at the boat which she does every day as it passes. In front of her home is the original Discovery. It was her vision that kept the sternwheeler tradition alive in Fairbanks as this tourist excursion.

Miles driven today in the MoHo: 0

The rest of the photos from this trip are linked here.

Day 15 July 20 Playing in Fairbanks

We woke this morning to gorgeous sunny skies and warm temperatures. I had reserved our tickets for the Discovery the night before online. One nice thing about the paved parking lot at Pioneer Park was free, fast WiFi! I uploaded lots of photos and caught up on previous blog posts with abandon, and for a minute was even ahead of the game. Of course, that wouldn’t last for long and I am actually writing this final catch-up post from our rainy camp in Talkeetna.

Our plans for the morning were to drive the Chena Springs Road and then return to go as far north on the Steese Highway toward the Dalton Highway as we could manage and still make our 2PM boat cruise. The drive was beautiful, and paid off with a leisurely visit with a young bull moose munching away at a river crossing.

We traveled as far as the Chena Hot Springs resort, checked it out a bit and then returned the same way to the Teese Highway. Along the way we stopped along the river Abby play time.

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Once back on the Teese Highway, we marveled at the wonderful views from the ski area north of town and stopped for photos of the Alaska Pipeline.

Later in the evening, after our boat ride on the Discovery (a separate post) we visited the Aurora Ice Museum in downtown Fairbanks for the digital wide screen photo symphony of the northern lights, produced by LeRoy Zimmerman. Before the show we saw amazing ice sculptures lit by colorful lights and had a few moments to watch an ice sculptor in action. It was definitely a bit of touristy action but the photos were beautiful and even though they were still images, the transitions gave the feeling of movement and the lights looked very much like what I have seen in the night skies above Edmonton, and even from my hot tub in Rocky Point. The photos were presented accompanied by lovely classical music. Try staying awake after a day like ours in a dark theater listening to Leibestraum!

The rest of the photos of our explorations around Fairbanks are linked here

Miles traveled in the MoHo today: 0

Miles traveled in the Tracker: 102

Road condition: Another great two lane paved highway with joints and an occasional frost heave

Day 14 July 19 Delta Junction to Fairbanks

When we left Delta Junction this morning, it was raining hard, but within minutes of getting on the road, we were treated to our first moose of the trip. She was running along the road, but then conveniently stopped for me to take her photo. Along this part of the highway, moose are a constant problem, or I should says cars are the problem, with hundreds of moose killed every year by motorists.

Our drive to Fairbanks was short, and we arrived in time to spend the afternoon visiting two places on our list of must-see sights. The Fairbanks Visitor Center is at the Morris Thompson Cultural Center in downtown Fairbanks along the Chena River. The display gardens are wonderful, filled with the huge flowers and vegetables that thrive in the long daylight. The center itself is filled with interesting and lovely displays, including painted dioramas and artifacts from the area. We really enjoyed it.

We then traveled across town to the northwestern hill above the river to the dramatic Museum of the North at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. This university is in the perfect place for studying polar climates, and for materials testing in climatic extremes. The Museum itself is fantastic, with a controversial architecture that represents the landscapes of the north, tremendous displays from all the regions of Alaska, and a gallery dedicated to Alaskan art. There are hourly movies scheduled, one that we are sorry we missed was called “Dynamic Aurora”. These cost an extra $5, but it was more the time than the money that kept us from attending. We also knew that we were going to see another aurora presentation at the Ice Museum in town, so thought we could skip this one.

We spent enough time there to get “museum fatigue”, with our eyes and brains overloaded with tons of information and our legs and feet tired from all the standing around reading rather than actually moving. I loved seeing “Blue Babe”, the steppe bison killed by something with teeth that may have been a lion and then preserved in the cold climate with skin and hair that could be studied by scientists for clues about his existence.

We had already decided to stay at Pioneer Park in their pavement parking lot for $12 no hookups, but with a nice row of shade trees behind us. It seems we managed to arrive in Fairbanks during their Gold Rush Days and the parking lot was full. I still laugh at the fact that we never managed to actually go inside the park to see all the stuff there that was drawing the crowds. It was a noisy place, and for the first time on the trip, I used my ear plugs to sleep. Once the shades were drawn and the ear plugs were in, we could have been anywhere!

After a bit more exploration of Fairbanks we found out that we could have joined the many RV’s at the east side WalMart for free and had access to shopping and probably less noise. Also, just up the block from where we were parked was a lovely, quiet state park, with access to the river and hookups for a bit more money. Still, it was kinda fun being in the parking lot directly across from the famous Salmon Bake.

This is supposedly another great thing to do in Fairbanks, and I had my heart set on doing it. Mo agreed to the spendy $32 per person, but she wasn’t in the mood to do the ‘all you can eat’ thing and was going just for the ambience since I didn’t want to do it alone. After our museum visits, we came back home and I decided to go read the blogs and then checked in with TripAdvisor about the bake. I am sooo glad that I did. Even though some folks may have enjoyed it, the reviews were less than stellar, and we decided to skip it. Lots of money saved on that one, I think, and we won’t have to try to walk off all the unneeded calories.

While we watched the cruise buses and Salmon Bake blue bus shuttles started rolling in, one after the other, unloading people by the dozens. The bake is offered from 5 to 8 and there must have been hundreds of people in that place. No wonder the food is reputed to be cold and the service non-existent. Remember, this observation is rumor only and not my personal experience.

I also can’t believe that I never took a single photo of our parking lot campsite or the mine entrance to the Salmon Bake. I guess that may have been because it was actually pretty warm out there, and there were so many people that we would quickly retreat to the safety of the MoHo when we arrived.

Miles traveled today: 95

Road condition: excellent paved highway

The rest of the photos for this day are linked here

Day 13 July 18 Boundary Boondock to Delta Junction

Once again I have been awake since 2 or so, unable to sleep even with the shades drawn and the MoHo dark in spite of the light. It has been raining all night, even with the predictions of sunny skies in Fairbanks to come. I hope they are right and this rain is going to leave us. Folks at the visitor centers are complaining about the lack of summer this year, with rain and cold temperatures in an area usually blessed with warm sunny skies. I expected dreary, chilly, rainy days on this trip, tried to prepare myself mentally for that possibility, but looking outside at the socked in skies still isn’t any fun.

We settled in last night at the Smith’s Green Acres RV Park just north of Delta Junction. The owner is an interesting sort, but I think most folks around here tend to be interesting. We got a nice long pull through site with shade, just what we need. No cable tv but one channel comes in on the antenna. Probably irrelevant, since tv hasn’t been any kind of priority lately. I do have internet, but with an irritating glitch in the setup that requires me to repeatedly go back to the park owner’s advertising page and log in. Happens in the midst of uploads which doesn’t make me very happy! This park has a Good Sam discount and none other, and after considerable bantering and conversation, we got a ten percent discount for Mo’s retired military status. Still cost 37.50 for one night of hookups.

We originally planned to stay at the Family Camp at Eilson AFB, but decided that maybe we wanted to spend our two Fairbanks nights closer to town. Thanks to CoolRV’rs on the road, we are now going to check into the City Park and dry camp right on the river close to town. There are a ton of folks traveling through Alaska right now, and the biggest group headed up by Dennis and his huge 500 lens, may be passing us or already has passed us. I have followed their blogs and learned a lot from their recommendations. They were in Fairbanks a couple of days ago. The owner at the park here said that many folks are actually heading out of Alaska right now, as it starts to get a bit darker and the temperatures cool off.

At this junction marking the official end of the Alaska Highway, we have yet to mark the halfway point of our trip, with just under 3,000 miles so far and another 4,000 to go. Our costs are running close to $175 per day, but hopefully that will decrease a bit as we spend a bit more time at each stop.

Our travels yesterday took us from our boondock site near the eastern Alaska boundary, through the historical Chicken Creek mining district and the town of Chicken. We stopped in for a look at all the chicken related memorabilia and were amazed at how many RV parks had popped up around the original one building town. It’s beautiful around here, and gold still brings in prospectors hoping to find that magical pay dirt. We saw another caravan of 20 RV’s parked in the lot with a sign proclaiming the leaving time. I have no idea whether they were going east or west, but we sure were glad we missed them on the road. I am not quite sure why someone would choose to drive this gorgeous, wild, open land in a pack, but I suppose it must work for some. Not for us! We are a couple of independent women who really want to run our own timetable!

As we continued south and west from Chicken, we were alone on the road, the very rough, potholed, wet road. The rain came and went, the views opened up in some areas, made more open by the huge Taylor Fire Complex that burned 1.5 million acres in 2004. Judy said she was here during those fires. I can’t imagine how awful that must have been! In spite of sporadic rain, we have been blessed with gorgeous, fresh, clear air throughout this entire trip. No smoky fire haze obscuring the vistas, no smog, no pollution from anything at all. I think that may be one of my most favorite things so far. Air. Pure. Clean. Air. It is one of the reasons I love living at Rocky Point.

Still, in spite of the guidebooks, the signs, the warnings, we didn’t see one single animal. In the wildest part of our trip, through the Forty Mile Wilderness, home of the biggest herd of Caribou in Alaska, filled with bear and moose, fox and lynx, we didn’t see anything at all. So be it. According to all the photos on the blogs, there are moose just about everywhere from here on out.

Arriving in Tok, we stopped at the very wonderful visitor center to pick up a big pile of Alaska brochures for all the places we planned to travel. This park was highly recommended by a very nice woman at the center, so we set our sights for Delta Junction. After cooking some burgers on the grill, we drove back to town to take the obligatory photos of the Highway end post, and found a car wash so that we could see out the windows of the Tracker. Before going home, we drove a bit north to check out Rika’s Roadhouse at the Big Delta State Historical Park.

The park had one of the most lovely displays of historical buildings that we have seen thus far. The Roadhouse was initially developed in 1904 but it wasn’t until 1917 that John Hajdukovich from Yugoslavia hired Swedish born Rika Wallen to run his business. Rika made the roadhouse something different than ordinary, with lush gardens, cows, sheep, and poultry, allowing her to serve fresh vegetables, eggs, milk, and meat to her customers.

The Roadhouse was also a center of communications, and pivotal as a transportation hub for prospectors traveling along the Tanana River to Fairbanks. With the completion of the Alaska Highway in the 40’s, the population of Big Delta moved to the junction of the Alcan and Richardson highways, signaling the end of an era. Rika’s closed soon after that. Walking the beautiful grounds and gardens was a lovely way to end our first day in Alaska.

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The rest of the photos for this day are here

Day 12 July 17 The Top of the World

One of the reasons we thought to leave Dawson today was to avoid the 20 rig caravan scheduled to cross the Yukon on the ferry tomorrow morning. It is a good idea to check with the Information Center about possible caravans leaving on the ferry so you can adjust accordingly. I couldn’t quite imagine driving this wild place in a line of RV’s. At noon, when we drove down to the ferry, there was already a large line of cars, RV’s, and folks on foot crossing the river. The only way west from Dawson is to cross the Yukon River on the last existing ferry along this route, both the Perry Ferry and the Stewart Ferry are now replaced by bridges. The ferry is free, part of the Yukon highway system. Sometimes you are lucky and there is no wait, sometimes you are a second kind of lucky and there is. Our second kind of lucky turned out to be just an hour and a half of time to watch the ferry fight the incredibly strong current of the river loaded up with big Holland America busses and to visit with local folks here for the festival.

We initially planned to cross with the Tracker hooked up, but after seeing the big rigs and busses bumping on the exit across the river, we thought better of that plan and unhooked. Mo had to then get the Tracker back to the end of the line of passenger cars and we hoped we would still cross at the same time, but it didn’t look good. I actually enjoyed the wait, watching and visiting, eating another piece of the giant cinnamon bun from Beaumont Lodge, and just enjoying the gorgeous sunlight and the view.

When I finally loaded, first rig on the ferry, I was amazed to see Mo get waved on as the last rig because she was short enough to fill in the space. Perfect. The river was especially high and muddy, with a powerful current now and then laced with huge logs and debris. Must be a talented person who runs that boat! In no time, we were off the ferry and hooked up with the Protect-A-Tow in place ready to tackle the gravel road to Tok and the Alaska Highway.

I had read about this road, seen photos from other blogs, heard varying reviews from writers that didn’t give me a clue of what was actually in store for us. This, finally, was the wild north that I had come to see. This road, rough as it is, was magnificent, utterly breathtaking, awe-inspiring magic. I began to feel the magic within the first few miles, as we climbed the long grade to the ridgetop run that most of the road follows along the spine of the mountains.

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The wild Yukon spread out before me to the east and north, and the deep valleys of the Yukon River and its tributaries to the south.

I wouldn’t have missed this part of our trip for anything. Every single penny of the trip is worth the wild and beautiful landscape we traveled today, on a road built only a few decades ago. Long ago, in Idaho, I worked in a wild area of the St Joe National Forest, and traveled a ridge run similar to this one for many miles into the back country. I loved that road, the 201, more than any other in my lifetime. This was the 201 on steroids, winding along the ridges, across open grassy slopes above timberline, with views into hundreds of miles of roadless wilderness only known to First Nations and old trappers. Hundreds of miles without a telephone pole, or a power transmission line, or a cell tower anywhere, or road the only ribbon of civilization crawling through to the distance. Not a clear cut in sight. Nothing but the wild Yukon into the wild Alaska.

I suppose the only mild disappointment was that we still saw no animals at all on the route. Oops, we did see one more squirrel run across the road, but that was it. Not a sheep or a bear or a caribou. So many warnings, both on signs and in the Milepost, indicated that at least here, we would see animals. Again, it was not to be.

After two very short hours, we crossed into Alaska. This northernmost border crossing was simple and quiet, with no one in front of us, even though we had seen a few rigs along the route. We were asked no questions except how long we had been out of the United States and how many pets we had. After the officer checked our passports and pet papers we were on our way. The rain that we watched building in the west finally overtook us at the border of Alaska and we drove on a bit, searching for a wide place along the road. As promised, the road turned to wet, rough dirty gravel, and Mo was glad to find a nice long turnout where we parked for the night.

Since the border behind us closed at 8, there was only a bit of traffic coming along behind us before everything was silent for the rest of the night. I say “night” very loosely. We gained an hour, so were worn out, fed and in bed by something silly like 6:30 with our books. At midnight, when I woke, it was a bright twilight evening, with the almost full moon rising over the ridge behind us. There is a small stream of water running down the mountain behind the rig, and I had hoped it might bring in some critters. It’s now 3:30 am and I have been writing for some time and have yet to see any critters in the morning light. It never got dark at all.

I turned the generator on to run a bit of heat in the 40*F outside temperatures and to keep the inverter on so I could charge up the computer. I feel like a newborn with my days and nights mixed up, just wondering if in this bright morning light I should now try to get some sleep. Mo keeps wanting to drive since she hates navigating, so at least she is back there snoozing away while I type and manage photos. Today we continue toward Chicken and Tok and once again will be on the Alaska Highway.

The Klondike/Top of the World loop certainly has it great moments and its downside. Still, I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Here is a slide show of the journey.

Miles traveled today: about 125 between site15 at Dawson and 16 at our boondock site

Road condition: hard surface fine gravel with rough spots, steep grades up and down to the Alaska border. From the border to our boondock site, gravel that seems more like dirt, rutted and rough, but so far we haven’t had any mishaps inside or outside the MoHo and Tracker. Kayaks still on tight and all windows still intact.

If you want to see the rest of the photos, they are linked here