North to Alaska (again) – Part 6 (finally!)

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Over 1 year has passed since the last blog entry and over 2 years since the events in this entry have happened.  I have no idea why it has been so delayed.  I mean, I am retired so I must have oodles of time!  Oh well, here we go.


Leaving Whitehorse the next logical step is Watson Lake, home of the signpost forest.  We stopped here on the way north and did the requisite sign post addition/maintenance.  We didn’t need to do this again so we found a free parking spot near the recreation center and had a pressure free evening.


Heading south we planned on going back on the Cassiar highway and we did.  We made sure we were fueled up, downloaded all the needed maps on our phones, filled up with water and dumped.  There are not many services on this road and NO cell service.  We stopped at the Jade store on the way.  Our next stop was Kinaskan Lake but on the way we happened to see this fox on the side of the road with the leg of some other animal in its’ mouth.  We also saw a mother bear with a cub.  You can see all the insects all over the mother.

Run!


Kinaskan lake did not disappoint other than we could not get a lakeside spot.  Some kind people let us come through and get a view of it.

From across the street.
Placid, not Lake Placid though.


We continued to a destination that none of us had been to before.  A side trip to Stewart BC and Hyder AK.  Two towns west of the Meziadin junction.  Stewart is much bigger than Hyder but you cannot travel freely between them. You have to go through border customs each direction.  Hyder, however, has more of what you came here to do.  The Fish Creek observation area and the Salmon Glacier.  On the way back to the Cassiar we stopped to look at Bear Glacier.

A bear fishing.
Salmon Glacier
Bear glacier

We had a long day’s drive heading south.  We ended up at the Burns Lake Village campground.  This was a free city run campground.  A bit sketchy but free!  The next day we continued our Canadian exit through Prince George, with a stop at Costco.  We ended up in Quesnel and the downtown RV park.  The train track ran right behind it so if you like that, this is great for you.  Nearby the park, is a public dump station.  We were waiting for our turn and the couple in front of didn’t seem to know how to use a sewer hose.  They just dumped on the apron and hosed it into the hole.  Not fun to watch.

At this time Kamloops and Kelowna were having issues with fires and housing people displaced by the fires.  It was recommended that visitors/RV’ers avoid the area, so we did.  A bit south of Quesnel is where Canada highway 1 crosses our path.  The initial thought was to go east on CA-1 to Kamloops but we heeded the advice and went south out of Ashcroft through a lesser travelled road.  The initial part was very steep and challenging but then it opened up to countryside road that was much more enjoyable.  We went by a copper mine and tailings lake that was very impressive.  We had kind of changed from tourists, checking out a lot of things, to just travelers trying to get to the next point.  It was understandable since we had a bit of a deadline to get to the US on a certain day.  

We made it to Merritt and spent the night at Walmart.  The next day we passed the road to Kelowna, and just kept going south heading to Omak WA.  We travelled through a beautiful valley and were presented with another choice.  Do we enter the US at the Osoyoos station, which is normally very busy, or try the lesser used crossing at Nighthawk.  We chose the latter.  It was interesting, I think they were curious why we crossed there (suspicious?).  It was even more fun when we told them we were bringing a shotgun across, but we had all the documentation.  They wanted to enter the trailer, without me, and check things out.  I offered to open the door for them but they felt they could do it with my instructions.  They could not.  I opened it and let them look around.

We got across the border and on to Omak through another nice valley by the Simikameen River.  We were able to visit Roxie’s niece who lives there.  However, we were there to retrieve our handguns that we shipped from Tok AK.   We went to the shop right after they were supposed to open but they weren’t.  They opened about an hour later than normal and the clerk didn’t know what to do specifically to give us our guns.  Luckily they called the owner and he was able to accommodate us.  We went back, hooked up and headed out, glad to be in the USA.

Our next stop was a Cabela’s in Yakima WA.  We went through some interesting rock formations on the way.  The next day we parted ways with George and Marcia at the OR/WA border.  They were headed west to see relatives and we continued south.  The did tell us about the Stonehenge recreation which we checked out on a hill overlooking the Columbia river.

WA Moses Coulee Rd going toward Wenatchee
Overlooking the Columbia River.
Stonehenge-ish.

An overnight near LaPine OR, also to do some laundry, we got to Redding CA.  We spent a week at the old KOA (that my parents owned for 9 years) to see Roxie’s sister.  Then down to Porterville, with a stop at the Merced Elks Club RV park.  The Merced Elks have a very nice setup and will also take non-Elks members.  Stop by if you get a chance.  

Porterville for 5 nights, then to Hesperia Elks after a dinner at Texas Roadhouse.  The next day was home.

We were glad to get back after almost 4 months and over 10000 miles of travel.

We have been to Alaska twice now (via road).  I have actually been there 3 times.  Would we go to Alaska again?  Possibly, not to Coldfoot but definitely Homer, Hyder and Palmer.  Our next visit there would probably be on cruise ship to see some of the ports we could not get to.  

Thanks for being so patient with the Alaska blog.

North to Alaska (again) – Part 5

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Once again, I am pretty close to a year behind on this entry. These are the continuing adventures of our 2023 Alaska summer trip.

We headed back to ‘civilization’, Anchorage. We parked in the Cabela’s parking lot for the night and got some necessities done in town, shopping, laundry, and moose hunting? We were on our way to the first two on the list and got sucked into the last one. We were driving downtown Anchorage, passing a park by a Post Office and George spotted a moose eating in the divider. He hopped out of the truck and pursued the moose throughout the park, it went through a pond and ended up in a park parking lot. Most other people were pretty non-plussed about the moose wandering around downtown, I guess this is Alaska.

The next night was just up the road to Wasilla and an overnight stop in the Walmart parking lot. The interesting incident here was that Walmart was evacuated due to a fire alarm. George happened to be in the restroom then, so he claimed he caused it.

We continued our northerly trek with a bit of eastward movement on our way to just south of Glenallen. We stayed in Glenallen on our 2019 trip but we found that there was another free location at a boat ramp parking lot just south of there near Tazlina, and we headed there.

We were on our way to Valdez. Roxie and I did a day trip there in 2019 from Glenallen but this time all of us were going to spend a couple of nights there. On the way down we stopped off at the Wrangell/St. Elias National Park Visitors Center. This is the closest most visitors get to the actual park.

Valdez was pretty rainy and miserable. It is a small little town with a Safeway, a very expensive Safeway! We braved the weather, it was pretty well flooded in the campground and visited the local fish hatchery. We got to see the salmon swimming back to the hatchery where they started their journey. They are unable to continue up the local river so they get diverted to the fish ladder and on to their demise. However, sometimes they don’t even make it up the ladder as other animals want to intercept them.

Leaving Valdez, we passed a glacier and headed to the town of Chitina, the mining town of McCarthy, and the Kennecott Mines. This is an area that few people visit when seeing Alaska and our first time doing so. We drove just past Chitina and there was a small free campground where we stayed for two nights.

Worthington Glacier along Richardson Hwy driving from Valdez AK

We took the day trip to McCarthy. It is a road that we would not want to take with the trailers, although some people do. You drive to the river that flows out of the Kennecott Glacier. You park your vehicle there and walk across a footbridge to the other side. The Kennecott Mine is quite a few miles up the road but the local businesses provide shuttle vans to get you up and back.

Once you get to the mine, you can walk around and see the buildings, utilize some of the vendors there, or perhaps walk up to the Kennecott Glacier. We just stayed around the mine area but did have a view of the glacier.

Coming back from McCarthy on our road less traveled, we encountered a gentleman on the side of the road with a flat tire. We stopped to see if we could assist. He was a man from France who rented a minivan in Denver, drove it to Alaska, and ended up where we found him but no cell service. We also had no AT&T cell service where we were at, however, we did have a Verizon signal. We have two different providers on our cell phones for times when the other doesn’t have coverage, precisely for this.

His minivan came with no spare tire and the flat repair kit they provided was unusable. He was able to use my phone to call the car rental company and they said they have no way to help him out in Alaska. We called the state troopers and they gave us the number of a tow truck service in Glenallen. We contacted them and they said they could send one the next day to get him transported to a repair location. He felt secure in staying the night on the side of the road, sleeping in the mini-van as he had done this since Denver. We were glad we could help.

Our journey continued back north through Tok where we decided to take the Top of the World highway. Conditions seemed to warrant it. A couple of days in Tok to resupply and on to a night in Chicken. The US/Canadian border closed each night at 6 pm and we wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to get through.

The border crossing was uneventful, or at least we thought it was, and we made our way on to Dawson City, YT. The Yukon River crossing is via ferry boat between West Dawson and Dawson City.

The ferry only runs in the summertime, in the winter the river freezes over enough to drive across. We got a video of George and Marcia crossing and they got one of us.

We did a few different things in Dawson City and went to see some of the old dredges in the area.

As we were driving back to town from the dredges I noticed a small stream alongside the creek and a large pond had been created. Beavers! We stopped to watch them for quite awhile and got this video.

We drove up to an overlook and got a good view of the town and the river.

In Dawson, I was able to recreate another photo from my 1964 trip. There is a paddle-wheeler named Keno that is drydocked in town, as it was in 1964. Normally the current tour does not allow visitors to the upper deck anymore but once I showed the docent the old photo, she made it happen. Here are the photos, 59 years apart.

I need to explain about the non-uneventful border crossing. While we were in Dawson City, I got a phone call from the Canadian Border Patrol and asked if I was with George Chen. I said yes, and he stated that they neglected to return George and Marcia’s passports at the border crossing. Fortuitously, the agent was passing through Dawson City the next day and would drop them off to George. Crisis averted!

Back to Whitehorse for our next ‘big’ city. But first a quick overnight in a free campground at Pelley’s Crossing.

Here another odd thing happened. We had stopped on the way for a restroom break and I found someone’s wallet which contained ID. I saved it and contacted the RCMP in Pelly’s Crossing. They drove by and retrieved it from me. Good deed done.

Whitehorse was two nights and we visited the transportation museum where they have the world’s largest windvane. A DC-9 DC-3 (thanks Roger Ritter) was donated and they mounted it on a swiveling stand so it could swing into the wind.

Now being back in Canada and heading to the lower 48, Alaska is no longer on our list, or is it?