Alaska or Bust: On the Road Again… August 6

On the Road Again… August 6

Today we slept in a bit and visited Pioneer Park in Fairbanks. It is the Alaskan equivalent of Greenfield Village in Michigan or Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts. They had a lot of old Alaskan cabins, hotels, brothels, things from years and era’s gone by that were moved to the park in Fairbanks. It was interesting and we spend just a short time there.

We headed back on the Alaska Highway to complete the short stretch that we missed on the way up when we hit the Glenn Highway to get to Wrangell-St Elias National Park. We even got a certificate for completing the highway, well we had to pay $1.00 for it. The highway officially ends in Delta Junction, AK at mile post 1422. I must admit that the driving conditions were much better than what I expected! Other than the frost heaves, the road was in great condition. We are good at predicting where we needed to slow down based on the landscape. Anytime we see black spruce trees that looked half dead and half falling over, that definitely means permafrost is underneath. Those “forests” are called drunken forests because the frost heaves have also displaced the roots of the trees. The roots are very shallow since they can’t get below the permafrost. Some of the trees can be 50 to 100 years old but are only a few feet high due to the poor soil and short growing season. I was able to look at the growth rings under a magnifying glass, it was amazing how little they grow annually.

We had originally planned to stay in Tok tonight (the place where we had the awesome breakfast with the reindeer sausage) where we stayed on the way up, but it was a beautiful day (finally) so we kept driving. We are in Port Alcan, of course you’ve never heard of it!! It’s right on the US-Canadian (Yukon) border and is nothing more than 2 gas stations a couple of campgrounds and the border crossing. We have to go back through Canada to get to the Alaskan panhandle. Tomorrow night we plan to stay in Haines Junction. First thing Monday morning we’ll call the Alaska Marine Highway to see if we can get a ferry from Haines to Skagway (only like 20 miles), if we can then we’ll head to Haines for a couple of days. If not then we’ll head to Skagway. They are very close together as the whale swims, but far to drive. If we can get to Haines, we are planning to do a daytrip down to Juneau on a ferry.

Today is the 1^st day is 2 weeks where I haven’t had to wear a coat. The temperature got up to 64. Yeah!!

Kate

PS My apologies for the poor quality photos - really slow internet...