Day 16 Long drive, terrible road, many delights

Dear Diary,

            We awake at 6AM.  Forgot to turn on the furnace last night, it’s 45 degrees in the RV.  Dress and walk down to the lake one more time.  Sun rising over the Ruby Ridge and morning light on all the surrounding mountains.  A large open crack has formed far off shore.  We have witnessed big changes in the thaw in 24 hours.  Hard to leave.  The Alaska men are gone, they left very early.  It’s likely one drove and the others slept.  We leave by 7AM, good-bye Congdon Creek!  We follow the lake for miles and pass through the town of Destruction Bay established during the construction of the Alaska Highway as relay station and camp.  All happening during WWII.  The speed limits drops and a trooper is sitting there with radar.  Wait, it’s a wooden cut-out painted to look like trooper.  It works for visitors, the locals ignore it we’re sure.  We continue to follow the lake, the road is patch and heave, slightly better than The C.  The mountains are a solid wall on both sides of the lake.  We are mountain geeks, always impressed with their majesty.  A tribal type memorial along the way dedicated to Southern Tuchone man, items of different symbols.  Pass Burbish Landing at the north end of the lake.  Big forest fire here 80k acres, people had to be evacuated.  Take a picture of the world’s largest gold pan.  If we hopped over the mountains and swam the Alaska Gulf to the west we would be in Anchorage and we would wake up Brenna.  We are seeing more of the St. Elias range, 14-16k.   Geek alert:  can’t stop admiring.  We are having sun and driving over fast moving glacial streams filled with glacial flour.  Yesterday we learned that we have been following the Skakwak-Denali Fault line from Canadian Rockies running through to Alaska Range running past Denali.  Perma-frost heave makes us reduce speed.  This road is quickly becoming a Cassiar sibling.  It is becoming apparent that Canada, the YT specifically, doesn’t give a hang about this road.  There are few citizens living there and it basically serves as a truck route for Alaska goods which don’t stop and US tourists (85%) who are just driving through to the border.  This is an American war time road built through a foreign land. In 1977, the US government agreed to the Shakwak Project with funding for reconstruction, to be completed 2010.  The road is the worst road we have been on since 1984 and on this trip.  It makes the Cassiar like a walk in the park.  We have to stay at 15 mph in many places.  The explanation is that this is tundra perma-frost, remote and glacial.  There are perma-frost experiments going on with tubes and vents to deal with it.  But we believe it’s evidence the Canadian govt doesn’t give a hang.  There is no reason for the deplorable state of this road.  And after passing into Alaska, in the nearby proximity and it being a more reasonable but not great road, we are confirmed.  We stop at an overlook of the Kluane River coming from the K. Glacier, one of which forms the Kluane Lake.  There is more information about the Kluane Nation who claim rights to this area.  The message is welcome, enjoy, come back.  It’s an incredible valley with info on salmon runs in September.  Salmon spawn in the creeks and streams, swim down the Yukon River, 2000 miles, eat and mature in the ocean a few years and then swim back to spawn and be eaten by humans, bears, wolves and others.  And they come back to the exact stream of their spawn.  Nature really is more fantastic than any fiction.  We hear a coyote or wolf howling nearby.  We hurry back to the RV, not sure what they are saying about us. The forests are black spruce and birch, no snow on the low levels.  Sign says No Caribou Hunting.   Poaching is a problem.  We see a porcupine by the road.  Another of our favorite creatures.  He is ready for a fight, all his quills are raised as warning.  They are various shades of brown, grizzled.  We pass beautiful Pickaxe Lake with muskrat and a pair or Trumpeter Swans.  Swans are very territorial, only see one pair per lake.  Good there are so many lakes.  The road is so bad it shakes you to the bone.  Can’t elaborate enough on this terrible road.  There is some effort at construction but it seems they are just going through the motions.  The shoulders are soft with piled loose gravel.  If you veer too much to the side off you go into a culvert or worse.  We come to Beaver Creek, pop. 112, the last town in Canada and YT.  This is a tourist bus route.  The Westmark Inn exists there for their use.  Nightly shows etc.  It’s so random.  Wondering how the heck the buses do this.  We pass by Canadian Customs and the road becomes beautiful and smooth.  We are heading to the US border.   A black bear by the road bids us farewell.  We approach the US border but first there is the stop that designates the 141^st Meridian and a cleared swath of land that goes on for miles and stone oblislisk markers.  A big welcome to Alaska sign, signage that we will be traveling a

Purple Heart Highway

.  Pat stands with one foot in US and one foot in Canada.  It’s a heady experience.  We are also passing into Alaska Time, our final time change.  And we are leaving metric for feet and mph.  We gain an hour, very meaningful for travel time.  Four hours earlier than home.  After a very bad US border crossing at Vancouver to the US a few years ago Pat always gets tense.  But no problems c crossing since then and we’ve had no problems.  Some of these guys can be real bullies.  It’s an eye opening experience for Americans.  We have crossed borders 3 times this trip and will cross twice more while on the return trip on the sea.  The roadway is fantastic through here and when we are out of sight of the border it turns back.  But while there is heave etc, it never gets as bad as the Kluane-Border stretch of the Alaska Highway.  We enter the Tanana Watershed, rivers are starting to sound familiar.  The Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge has a nice visitor center.  But we don’t stop.  The Milepost guide says this is a huge area for hundreds of thousands of migratory birds, most fragile are statuesque Sandhill cranes and feisty Trumpeter Swans.  One hundred forty three nesting species and only 25 are permanent.  This land of thousands of ponds, many unnamed, is home to black and grizzly bear, lynx, caribou, moose, coyote, red fox, beaver, wolf.  The art and craft of the Athabaskan people who live in the Alaska Interior, are represented using these animals.  As well as their famous birch baskets.  We are driving on the edge of the Tetlin Indian Reservation.   Forest fires in these areas are very serious, burning thousands of acres at a time.  We learned that lightning strikes account for most.  Interior Alaska can be hit 6000 times daily.  Black spruce burn easily and are the most pervasive species.  Interesting survival technique, when the fire reaches the cones they explode their seeds and begin re-seeding immediately.  We see more experimental perma-frost tubes by the road.  Starting to see blooming blue lupine wildflowers and another species that is purple.  A roadside info panel is dedicated to mosquitoes.  Can’t come to Alaska and not talk about it.  Multiple species and some very large – all feeding on blood.  It says a moose can lose a pint a day from mosquitoes feeding.  Poor moose, mosquitoes, flies, no-see-ums, no wonder they’re cantankerous.  We are in taiga, Russian for little trees and grow close together.  It’s about 85 degrees and breezy.  We pass another musher truck.  We stop at Northway to look at Athabaskan art/craft.  Bought a cylindrical 8 inch high birch basket with moss will on the sides and birch peelings.  Made by a woman in the area.   Interior Alaska is ice box in the winter and gets extreme temps in the summer.  We stop to take pics of the Wrangells.  We can see the 4 main peaks which is a rarity especially in this much heat.  They are 14-16k dormant volcanoes, snow and glacier covered.  All except for Mt. Wrangell which is still active and spouts some steam from time to time.  We are seeing them from the north side and even from this distance because of their massive size they seem very close.  Our pictures cannot do them justice.  We are thinking these temperatures may be too hot for animals to be active.  We cross where the Tanana River headwaters begin, 5^th longest river in Alaska, it flows through Fairbanks further west.  We pass Rt 5 going north to Dawson City, Chicken and Eagle.  As we come further west we can begin to see the Alaska Range.  We take a metal trestle bridge over the Tok River, high level, (Tok Glacier) and it’s a short one thankfully.   We come into the town of Tok, there is a burn suspension on.  Last year we came through fires here and outside Fairbanks.  They are concerned again.  The visitor center rep tells us no rain and even the ground moss is crunchy.  If it lasts much longer there will be a ban on ATV’s because their hot exhaust can start a fire.  We caught up with an Ak convoy who left on the same day we did.  They are looking for fishing.  The vs. center says the temperature here was -83 degrees in 1981 and 96 degrees in 2004.  She says it is currently 120 degrees in the sun.  They have nice bike/walking paths in this area of straight even ground.  Tok is also the official place where RV’s wash off the Alaska highway dirt.  We are feeling the heat.  The RV motor housing is partly located in the cab.  The heat from is makes it stifling.  Because of the outside temperature the vents don’t help.  Can’t believe we have to turn on AC.  Not good for gas mileage.  We stop to get gas and pay the least we’ve paid since we were in the US.  A HOG is filling up his Harley motorcycle at the pumps.  Don’t know how to say this delicately but we didn’t realize that a rider rides with the fuel tank between the legs.  We are at a cross-roads, Ak route 2 goes to Delta Junction (official end of the

Ak Highway

) and Fairbanks.  We take the Tok Cut-off and go south.  We enter the Mentasta Mountains.  We really liked this area last year.  We are traveling a scenic byway.  Road conditions vary but not awful.  Can’t speed.  We climb to Mentasta Summit at 2500.  Sign says 80% of the world’s trumpeter swans nest in Ak.  We see swans, a moose feeding and 5 caribou crossing the road all in 15 minutes.  A record setting 7.9 earthquake hit in 2002 upheaved the roadways for 209 miles with 12 inch deep cracks in this area of the Interior along the Denali fault.  Lots of effect along the

Glen Highway

.  All in 90 seconds.  Mentasta Lake Village is unincorporated, Athabaskans living subsistence lifestyle.  We cross another divide that separates watershed to Yukon River (Bering Sea) and Copper River (Gulf of Alaska).  Snow patches.  Chuck spots a grizzly in the middle of a field we stop to watch him run toward a small stream.  He is about 100 yards away.  He stops and sizes up a Canadian gander across the stream that stands his ground with his mate on a nest behind him.  The griz doesn’t cross the river.  Instead his spots something else and we watch him dash off into the stream, water flying.  Then he goes behind some trees and we’re thinking there’s a Canadian goose down there that’s not so lucky.  The grizzlies we’ve seen have all been the brown ‘grizzled’ color.  But in Yellowstone they were silver tipped.  Very beautiful bears and unique to YNP.  We are seeing the Wrangell peaks pretty clearly, Sanford, Drum, Blackburn, and Wrangell.  They are so massive they are making their own weather.  The contrast between low hanging clouds, bright sky and ice/snow is low its hard to make good pics with a regular camera.  We’ll have to commit these views to memory.  Road continues to be fair, a lot of heave, still better than you know what.  We pass Ahtell Creek with current active mining claims for silver lead and gold.  A reminder that gold and silver are still being mined.  We are hit with a sudden blast of wind.  We believe this is the Wrangell weather making effect.  We come to Chistochina, nice roadside village with cute gift shop.  An historical lodge with a grass airstrip to bring in guests.  Nice bike paths follow the road.  We enter about 10 miles of road construction requiring a pilot car.  Even though it’s stone and dirt, it has been grated smooth and watered for dust control.  We pass an Aurora Borealis Research Center, maintained by Airforce and Army.  We begin to parallel the great Copper River with confluence of the large Gakona and Gukana Rivers.  Copper drains to the Gulf of Alaska.  This waterway is a salmon fishing Mecca.  Lots of fish wheels and dip netting etc.  Kings and sockeyes June-July.  We leave the Tok Cut-off road and turn south on the

Richardson Highway

.  Shortly we arrive at Glennallen, pop 450.   Lots of govt. type jobs, Ak trooper station and AT&T Alaskcom microwave towers, an accredited 4 year Bible College, the native owned Ahtna Corporation is headquartered here.  Home of KCAM area news station and Caribou Clatters.  Lots of all season sport.  Used to be a Ak Pipeline work site but that’s not mentioned anymore.  

Glen Highway

takes off from here going to Anchorage.  On down the Richardson and all 4 peaks of the Wrangells are mostly visible except for Mt Sanford that sits directly behind Drum.  The sign in Glennallen says Thompson Pass is open so we can go through.  An Alaskan State Trooper has stopped a speeder and giving him a ticket.  The Memorial Day Weekend has officially started.  We start passing the Alaska Pipeline above ground with various pumping stations.  We pass the Chitna, McCarthy, Kenny Lake turn-off.  Went as far as Chitna last year and on to the Copper River fishing area.  Lots of fishwheels and dipnetting going on.  The dipnetters are nuts.  Someone ties a rope around their waist and they wade out in the strong current to catch salmon.  Very dangerous and completely whacko.  Would rather buy the salmon.  The McCarthy road is rugged old rail bed and not good for RV’s and most other vehicles.  Someday we will make our way back there to the Kennecott Copper Mine (defunct) and the beautiful lodge that got a National Geo rating.  We start climbing into Thompson Pass at around 2700.  We have entered the Chugach Range with 12-13k peaks.  We are greeted by sunshine on the peaks and can’t describe the beauty and our pictures will not be enough.  This is a special memory day.  This area along with Valdez is called the Switzerland of the North.  Never been to Switzerland but if it’s this beautiful maybe the Alps should be called the Chugach Alps.  The road is fair and must watch our speed.  We are hitting wind the higher we go.  We are following the Tiekel River, there was a terrible flashflood through here several years ago, there is still evidence of its force.  It cleaned out the moose and beaver, hoping to see them active again.  The Pass has gotten a record 974.5 inches in one winter and broken other day and month records.  The warm current from the ocean enters the small Valdez Bay and it creates hundreds of inches of rain and snow for the area.   The sides of the jagged peaks are sheer and waterfalls are everywhere falling from great heights.  Many avalanches are still evident.  A porcupine waddles along the road.  We see glaciers but finally see the Worthington Glacier that is spectacular and can actually walk up to its face.  We pass campers on the pull off with snowmobiles and a snow tractor.  They have a big marathon in Valdez this weekend.  The competitors ski down the mountain to the pass, ride a bike to the valley floor and the bay’s edge, kayak across the bay and then run back into Valdez.  Whew!  We see fog creeping up over the mountain peaks and know that the weather is changing on the other side in Valdez.  An 8% descent straight down, no switchbacks.  Great road conditions.  Come to the valley floor and enter Keystone Canyon, very narrow.  The Lowe River is racing next to the road.  Sheer cliffs press in on both sides of the road.  Several high waterfalls.  Can’t describer or record in pics.  Has to be seen.  Then we are in the Valdez Valley, lush with growth, Fiddlehead Ferns and Lupine blooming.  It’s obvious there is water and warmth.  A bike path follows the road into town.  See an immature eagle right a way and salmon spawning viewing areas.  The Silver Salmon Derby takes place here.  Bears like it too!  We see an evacuation route sign and are reminded of earthquakes and tsunamis and run for the hills.  We go to our campground that we found in the past.  The weather is windy and cold.  A significant change from the interior.   It’s a small campground for adults right on the harbor.  Chuck takes the short walk into town for stretching his legs.  Pat curls up in the RV.    We have driven almost 500 miles over 13 hours.  Time would have been better except for bad road.  It’s been a long day but we have a 3 days layover in one of our favorite places. Nighty night.