Tok, Alaska: Haines Highway to Destruction Bay To Tok

We left Haines, Alaska yesterday morning and, after driving ~200 Kilometers and passing again through Canadian Customs, rejoined the friends we are travelling with in Destruction Bay, Yukon, Canada. A better name might be Desolation Bay... it is pretty remote. Nothing there except for swarms of mosquito's.

Just as an aside, they say a caribou or moose can lose up to a pint of blood/day to these little blood suckers - ouch. 

Last night we camped at the Cottonwood RV Park. Our site had water and 15 amps of electricity -- a first for us. Usually we get a campsite with 50 amps and we can use all of the creature comforts we've come to know and love in our RV. Travelling throughout Canada and Alaska, most sites only have 30 amps, which works well since we can limit our energy use pretty easily.

Power, or rather the steady supply of power is an issue at a lot of campgrounds. Any fluctuations in power can trip the breakers which means a trip outside to reset the breakers. Not a difficult task unless it's the middle of the night, you are in your skivvies, and the campground owner's have been warning campers to stay away from the cute mother grizzly with the two cubs that likes to wander through the campground...

All that being said, 15 amps is a challenge however we were able to run the hot water heater, the main heater, and the refrigerator on propane rather than electricity to manage our electrical power usage.

We are currently getting about 20-21 hours of daylight every day. It's a little strange to go to bed at midnight and its just getting dark and then wake up at 3 am and it's just getting light. Actually, it really never gets darker than what most of us would call dusk. No need for a flashlight in Alaska this time of year...

This morning we were up and out by 8:30 am to travel the roughly 200 miles from Destruction Bay to Tok, Alaska, this time passing through US Customs.

The road in Canada to the US border was almost entirely under construction -- most of the time we only averaged about 35 mph, always ready to dive on the brakes when we spotted the 'Red Flag of Danger'. 

Every place the road crews have discovered a bad frost heave, pothole, or dip in the road they place a small red flag, which means, I'm pretty sure, this is the first place we will look if someone is reported missing. Some of the road hazards will completely swallow a car/small truck. For an RV like ours it starts a process of rocking in the RV that feels like it would throw you out of your seat if you were not wearing a seat belt.

At one point we hit a frost heave hard and a cabinet opened allowing some of our heirloom dishes to fall out... looks like we'll have to hit Walmart to replace a few pieces of the set...

Once we hit Alaska we had ~95 miles to go before we arrived in Tok. That's when the road gods started having a little fun with us. The next 90 miles of road were almost all recently repaved and smooth as glass. We made great time.

The last five miles seemed to take forever to complete. Every mile or so yet another flagger made you wait. The road was down to one lane and the construction crews used pilot cars to guide traffic. It was painful sitting there after making such good time earlier.

But that's the way it is up North. Road maintenance is a never ending process whenever it is not snowing/freezing. 

Tomorrow we will head to Fairbanks where I think we'll settle down for about a week. There's a lot to do in and around Fairbanks.

BTW - Mary Lynn was really, really excited when I mentioned we would have to retrace the path we took yesterday and today at the end of the summer on our way back to the US. She didn't believe me when I told her all that construction would be complete in a couple of months. Some of these projects have been going on for over six years.

I probably should have just kept my mouth shut -- a lesson you 'd think I would have learned by now.

See Ya!