West Fork Campground, AK to Delta Junction, AK – 163 Miles
Just to prove that our thermometer is not broken, the temperature this morning was a balmy 53 degrees. It’s been another sunny and dry (so far) day. The sky has been partly cloudy all day, and it looks like some rain may be coming in from the southwest. But so far it’s been a nice day.
The Taylor Highway between our campsite at Milepost 49 and its beginning at Tetlin Junction, Mile 1302 of the Alaska Highway, was paved all the way and in generally good shape. There were the usual short stretches undergoing maintenance and moderate frost heaves, but for the most part we were able to cruise at 55 mph. The highway skirts around the west side of Mt Fairplay, the highest peak in that immediate area at 5541 feet. It looks very high because of the low timberline, but when you consider that the elevation at our house is 5540 feet it doesn’t seem all that high. However, looking off to the southwestern horizon you can see a rugged range of mountains in the distance. I’m not sure what the name of the range is, but the map shows a series of peaks ranging from 10,000 to 13,000 feet.
The town of Tok, Alaska is just 10 or 12 miles west of Tetlin Junction. Tok is pronounced “Toke” (rhymes with Coke). It’s probably an Indian word, but anyone who lived through the 60’s probably associates it with something else. Tok is the first town in Alaska for those coming up the Alaska Highway, so it’s a town of RV parks and tourist-related shops and stores. We stopped at the large, modern visitor center in the center of town and picked up an armload of brochures and pamphlets for things to see and places to go in Alaska. Since it was almost noon, we asked the lady at the counter for a recommendation for a place to eat lunch. She directed us back down the highway a half mile or so to Fast Eddie’s, which turned out to be a pretty nice restaurant. On the way back to the restaurant, we saw our friends Jock and Karen, from last night’s campground, washing their RV at an RV park next to the restaurant, so we stopped and invited them to join us for lunch.
After lunch we made a quick stop at a grocery store and a liquor store to replenish our supply of barley pop and fruit of the grape, and headed west for Delta Junction, a hundred miles up the road. Back on the Alaska Highway was like being on an interstate after the roads we’ve been on for the past several days. Still two-lane, but wide and with shoulders. There’s still some minor frost heaving, which causes some loping as you drive, but the speed limit is 65 mph and it’s easy to cruise at that speed or higher. The road parallels the mountain range I mentioned earlier. For the most part the highway is close enough that you can’t see past the foothills, but the foothills form a continuous wall of granite that rises probably 5000 feet above the valley floor. The GPS on the dashboard indicated an average elevation of 1200 to 1300 feet along this hundred-mile stretch of highway, which would put the crest of this first range of hills somewhere around 6000 to 6500 feet. As the highway veered farther from the foothills, we could catch occasional glimpses of the snow-covered peaks farther off in the distance.
We crossed at least four fairly major rivers – the Tanana (rhymes with Panama, not banana), the Robertson, the Johnson, and the Gerstle Rivers, as well as numerous smaller rivers and creeks. The larger of these are quite wide, but shallow threaded rivers. That is, they consist of numerous small, twisting branches that weave in and out among themselves in a broad, bright white bed of rounded stones and gravel.
It was along this highway section that we saw our first moose of the trip – at least our first live ones. We passed two large cows standing down in the bar ditch between the pavement and the trees that line the roadway. This was exciting mainly because it marked the first roadside wildlife we’d seen since the Liard Springs area in northern British Columbia.
We reached our destination for the night, a small, rather primitive RV park called the Snowhook Club RV Park, which is located about ten miles east of Delta Junction. Don’t ask me what the significance of the name is because I don’t know. But we have a pleasant site nestled in a grove of Aspen trees, with electric hook-ups and a shower in the adjacent building which houses a small gift shop and restaurant. As I sit here writing this at six-ish in the evening, I hear a pack of coyotes howling in the woods behind us. Ah, wilderness…
Tomorrow it’s on to Fairbanks.
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