Alaska 14. Road Warriors July 23

It was a peaceful night. No road noise (rare for us on this trip so far). It was sprinkling rain when we got up, so rather than dally, I jumped out of bed to TAKE A SHOWER and WASH MY HAIR! But since we didn’t want to drive on an even worse muddy road, we hooked up and drove out to the main highway, where we stopped and caught up on emails, posted a blog and I blow-dried my hair with my dryer (another “Jennie” necessity). 

We looked at the maps and it was determined that we would probably actually make it to Alaska today. Hard to believe.

It was a short drive to Haines Junction, a cute little town where Dave found us an amazing bakery. And me, with my newly washed and blow-dried hair, just itchin’ for a good latté and breakfast sandwich, well… I was very happy. We also bought some KILLER jalapeño cheddar bread, which I’ve got to learn how to make.

This was a killer of a drive day. 

H O R R I B L E roads for the majority of the day. And here… here is where “The Milepost” actually DOWNPLAYED the reality. I mean, there were frost-heaved areas that could — and almost did — launch the camper airborne. There were areas where it wouldn’t matter if you slowed from the posted 90 KMH (60mph or so) down to a crawl because of the bone-rattling, teeth jarring pot holes and asphalt patching. It’s referred as DESTRUCTION BAY, which is a bay of Kluane Lake in Yukon, but also is a very apt name for the road. 200+ miles of pure hell.

Stressful.  It was here that Dave said, “I don’t care how we do it, but we are taking the ferry home.” I almost peed laughing….(and also: it’s not happening), but now I realize I haven’t explained the whole ferry story. It will have to wait. I have like 5 minutes of internet and Dave is chomping to go.

The whole day was made worse because we don’t really trust anything about 1) the hitch, 2) the camper suspension (I haven’t mentioned a concerning sound emanating from the driver-side tire/hub/suspension) and 3) the refrigerator. 

The border crossing, just before Tok Alaska, was uneventful. I was worried about all the food we had bought in Whitehorse, but it wasn’t an issue. Just “welcome home,” from the border agent, which actually felt kind of nice, and on we went. 

We were SO RELIEVED to be on a smooth road that it was hard not to start singing the national anthem, but it was just a 10 mile stretch probably just to make us look good to the Canadians. I mean… we gotta have something over them, right? And, despite my pleas to take a picture of the “Welcome to Alaska” sign… it didn’t happen.

The road got worse again, but not as bad as before. Take THAT, Canada!

We were just looking for a place to park it for the night and picked “Tok River Campground” which was a glorified rest stop on the Alaska Highway with tandem ore trucks roaring by directly behind on a more-or-less regular basis. All. Night. Long. It was also really hot. It wasn’t our best night. 

But the Green Curry over rice was good. It actually made it into our food rankings so far. (We have a list… But sorry, no picture. I have one, but Dave is staring at me…It’s 8:15pm and we have nowhere to stay tonight.)

We pulled out the cribbage board again. And this is truly odd for us. We aren’t game-players. But, with no internet, and with only so much reading you can do, cribbage is a good diversion. Dave won.