Alaska Trip – Page 7 – The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales

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

Day 12 July 17 Dawson City

Dawson City. As I sit here a day later trying to express what we felt about Dawson, I am at a loss for words. Disneyesque? Tourist Town? Another destination for cruise ships? Dawson Berry Farm? (aka Knotts Berry Farm)? For all those lovers of Dawson, I apologize. It wasn’t quite what we thought it might be. Of course, it may have been because we arrived during the annual July Dawson Music Festival that the town was so crowded, or because of the several huge Holland America busses there as well.

Dawson from Mo’s 1974 photos

I think Mo was a bit more surprised than I was, because she saw Dawson more than 30 years ago, when it was truly an old historic town full of crazy old buildings and history. This time, for her the whole place was just too slick and shiny, too much a destination “thing”. Today, however, we were blessed with gorgeous weather to walk the town, and watch the myriad types of people doing the same.

There were many young people, some we spoke to from Yellowknife and Fairbanks, alternative type kids with dreds and beards, backpacking and hitch hiking out of town after the music, friendly and polite and fun to talk to. While sitting on a bench with Abby, waiting for me to check out a gallery, Mo visited with a woman from the Holland America cruise ship bus, touring Alaska by boat, bus, and train, and having a great time. She was from Henderson, Kentucky, and wanted the chance to see Dawson in the snow, for just two days or so. We had fun talking about the beautiful hardwood forests of Henderson and the Audubon Park that we visited last fall.

Today, after a beautiful quiet night ten miles east of town at our campground,Klondike River CG Yukon Parks, we decided that in order to avoid the caravan of 20 motorhomes crossing the Yukon tomorrow morning, we would forfeit our prepaid camp fees for tonight and leave for the Top of the World this afternoon. With that decision made, we both felt better about our visit to Dawson. There really wasn’t enough here for us to see to warrant a two day visit as originally planned.

Yes, there is a lot to see. There is the ride on the Yukon on the sternwheeler, a great thing to do if you have a spare 120 Canadian for two people. There are the dancing girls at Gertie’s, and the gambling, neither of which particularly interested us this time around. We skipped the Follies in Whitehorse, thinking that we would enjoy the funkier version in Dawson. Seems as though they no longer have a Follies show in Dawson, and Gertie’s Dancing Girls are the replacement. Three shows a night, ten bucks a show, lasts half an hour, great costumes according to the visitor center people. Last night we had no desire to drive back to town for contrived night life at 8:30 to jostle for a first come first serve show.

We filled the MoHo at the only gas station open for 5.49 per US gallon and backtracked to the road leading to Dredge No.4, a Canada Historic Site down the road to the gold discovery site that started the whole thing. We saw the first wildlife since Arctic ground squirrels when a small fox crossed the road in front of us with breakfast dangling from his mouth.

Placer mining is familiar to me. I did soil survey in Murray, Idaho, another historic placer mining district, with valleys filled in with placer tailings. In Columbia, California, heart of the gold country, I mapped soils developed on 150 year old piles of the chemical mix left over from hydraulic mining. I wear gold, I use metal as we all do, mining is a necessary thing, but what is left from the mining industry is daunting to me. The landscape here at Dawson looked incredibly familiar to me, even though I had never been here. We saw some signs in town saying, “Placer Mining Supports This Store and This Store Supports Placer Mining”. Of course, mining is the heart and soul of Dawson and of the Yukon. Important stuff. Necessary. The sign made me think that there are probably some folks out there taking issue with the mining. As always, it is challenging to find some kind of balance.

Walking around town for a couple of hours taking photos was perfect for us. There was a beautiful city garden full of huge delphiniums along the river, and flowers everywhere throughout town. Some of the buildings were painted in Technicolor and others were crafted of old tin and weathered boards. The visitor center was beautiful, a replica of the old HBC building that stood there at one time. We certainly didn’t see everything or do everything. There are many blogs out there filled with great stories of fun in Dawson City where I can go read all about what I didn’t do some winter evening when I am back reviewing my own take on visiting Dawson.

I loved the Yukon River. I loved the magical line between muddy Yukon water and clear green water from the Klondike as the rivers merged along the waterfront. I loved the power of the Yukon River, and looking at it, I loved imagining it’s winding course to the Bering Sea in the north. I loved reading about how it once flowed south until the continental glaciers turned it northward. I loved the flowers and the brilliant sunshine that again came out for us in Dawson. I loved the crazy mix of people.

Would I ever need to see Dawson again? Probably not. I bought a small copy of Jack London’s Call of the Wild. His house is here is Dawson, among other authors of north country lore. Hadn’t read that book since high school, and read it while I watched the moon come up in the midnight twilight of the Yukon when I couldn’t sleep. The book was written in 1903 and the names of places throughout the book rang true to me, places we had driven yesterday on the Klondike, Perry Crossing, the Stewart River, others that meant nothing to me as I read the book so many years ago, now ringing with a different sort of familiarity.

Dawson City. Mythical town of the Klondike Gold Rush, all dressed up for the 21st century.

Many photos from this day are linked here.

Miles traveled this morning 0

Coming Next: Everything changes at the Top of the World

Day 11 July 16 Driving the Klondike Highway

When Mo and I first started planning this trip, one of many choices had to do with choosing whether we would leave the Alaska Highway to travel the North Klondike Highway through Dawson and over the Top of the World. We heard varying reviews about the pros and cons, and after we listened to a young woman at Boya Lake who made her husband drive all the way from Ontario because she wanted to see it one more time, we finally decided we wanted to see it. Mo also had some fond memories of Dawson City from her time there as well and thought it would be fun to go back.

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The day started overcast and dreary, but things perked up when we got a 3 percent discount for gasoline for no reason whatsoever. The first impressions as we drove north was that there was so much water, so many lakes. Thanks to our friendly Alaskan guys at the boat launch yesterday, we knew that Fox and Little Fox Lake would be wonderful for kayaking, but by the time we got there, it was still fairly cold and gray and neither one of us was particularly up for stopping so quickly and undoing the kayaks. We passed Lake Laberge, made famous by Robert W. Service in his poem, “The Cremation of Sam McGee”.

The cinnamon buns at Braeburn Lodge are a tradition we didn’t want to miss, so in the dreary rain we pulled over for a bun. The owner of the place ignored me for awhile before he grudgingly got up to sell me a $9. roll that took up nearly half the passenger seat. Mo and I ate on that thing for days before finally giving the last of it to Abby.

We continued north through the broad lush landscape, seeing the only bear of the day as a blur of brown along the roadside. Even though he was brown, it was probably just a brown black bear, but he was a bit bigger than the two cubs we had seen previously on the Cassiar. Again, there was no way to stop on the road, no place to pull over, and when Mo finally stopped and I got out to try to backtrack to where the bear was, he was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t really want to tromp around in thick wet vegetation to find him either! I’m not completely stupid. So once more, no photos of our bear sighting.

Just beyond the bear was the historic Montague Roadhouse, with logs mossy and nearly hidden by the thick vegetation. I loved comparing Mo’s photos from her 74 trip to what the roadhouse looked like today. When she passed, there were no trees around and today it was nearly hidden in the forest. As we continued north, we passed the beautifully colored Twin Lakes, one on each side of the road, with that gorgeous turquoise color so characteristic of glacial meltwaters.

We stopped for the interpretive signs about the community of Carmacks, fully intending to stop in and walk along the river and explore the town. Somehow we missed the turnoff and were on the bridge over the Yukon River before we realized what had happened. We watched Carmacks in the rear view mirrors and decided, Oh Well.

The Klondike Highway is the historic route to the Gold Rush world of Dawson City, and the Yukon River is the heart of the Klondike Gold Rush. I loved this huge river, and our stop at Five Fingers Rapids was the highlight of the day. We hiked down the 218 stairs to the boreal forest along the river to overlook the historic rapids. The Yukon has impressive parks and interpretive signs about the history and landscape of the area. It was gorgeous. It was hard to imagine the old sternwheelers navigating those wild rapids through the channels on their way to Klondike Gold.

Farther north I was thrilled to see deposits of white volcanic ash from the White River ash deposits from 1,250 years ago, the source possibly buried beneath the Klutlan Glacier in the St Elias Mountains in southeast Alaska. The ash covers more than a third of the southern Yukon. I studied volcanic ash soils in the northwest throughout my career, so this was a delight, and of course I had to get out and collect some to take home.

Somewhere along the way, we came to the boundary marking the end of Continental glaciation in the Yukon and the beginning of what is called Beringia, an area of the far north that was not ever under the great ice sheets during the last ice ages. This area under what is now the Bering Sea was the land bridge between North America and Siberia facilitating the migration of animals and humans from Asia to North America. Somehow, even with all my training in earth history and geology, I had missed the fact that all of the north wasn’t under the glaciers.

At the historic Pelly Crossing overlook, we stopped for lunch in warm 80 degree sunny weather, without a single bug to trouble us. The beautiful weather and lack of gnats, flies, and mosquitoes has been quite a surprise. Another beautiful crossing at the Stewart River, and then we started climbing to a large, rolling plateau with scraggly spruce and not much else. It wasn’t until we reached the Tintina Trench rest area, that things started to look interesting again.

This huge trench extends hundreds of miles across Yukon and Alaska and is the largest fault in North America. We also began to see hordes of buses from Holland America, coming and going on the road, and stopping at the rest areas. Up until now, we had been almost alone on the highway, so it was a shock to suddenly have to share a rest stop with 60 people at once! In spite of the crowd, I really enjoyed once again learning about more earth history. That feeling of learning something completely brand new and unknown is so delightful to me.

We decided that rather than going in to the town of Dawson City, we wanted to dry camp at the Klondike River Campground, a Yukon Territory site that was just $12 for the night. Neither of us wanted to fight the music festival crowds in Dawson so it was a good choice. Even on Saturday night, there were plenty of sights and we settled in easily. The storm clouds were coming in, but the rain held off long enough for us to drive to the top of Dome Mountain to see the classic view of the beautiful Yukon. We drove down into town to see what was going on, and stopped in at the visitor center to get our bearings before returning to our quiet dark campground in the evening rain.

Miles traveled today: 331

Road conditions: Almost all the Klondike Highway was good paved 2 lane road, however there were enough rough areas that it required constant attention. There were also several sections of construction and bridge work, but no delays.

The rest of the photos for this day are linked here.

Day 10 July 15 Whitehorse

I fell in love with the Yukon today. It is a magnificent land with a mythical story of Klondike Gold and a legendary river with the longest salmon run in North America. We walked in the rain, viewed the fish ladder in wet jackets, hid from the storm in a great museum, drank perfect cappuccinos, toured a brewery, sampled great beer, walked the downtown shops, hiked in the afternoon sun along the mighty Yukon, did piles of laundry at 5 bucks a load to wash and dry, swept and wiped and shook and polished the MoHo, and it’s still broad daylight at 9:30pm. I am just tooo tired to even think about blogging, but we are going off the grid now for a few days as we travel north to Dawson and the Top of the World Highway. Stay tuned. I think this is what my blogging friend Erin calls a “teaser”.

And to the commenter who asked: Abby is a rescue dog, we think Cocker Spaniel and Blue Heeler Cow Dog

Days driven today in the MoHo: ZERO