Day 19 – Tuesday 7/26/2011

Fairbanks, AK to Denali National Park, AK – 141 Miles

Not much to report today. We bid our new friends Jock and Karen adieu, promising to stop by and visit them when we pass through Whitehorse on our way home, then started the next leg of our journey. We passed the wildlife refuge I mentioned yesterday and the sandhill cranes were closer to the viewing area alongside the road, so we stopped and I snapped off a couple of photos. Then it was onto the Parks Highway toward Denali. It’s interesting that, although the highways are numbered like everywhere else, they are more commonly referred to by a name, like the Richardson Highway or the Parks Highway.

Before leaving Fairbanks, we stopped at Pioneer Park, a recreation of early Fairbanks in a park-like setting on the banks of the Chena River. They have relocated several of the original settlers’ cabins and constructed complementary buildings in the style of the turn of the 20^th century. In one of these is a very good small museum with artifacts and displays of the period. We wished we could have stayed longer but we were anxious to get to Denali.

Heading south out of Fairbanks, the Parks Highway immediately climbs up into a range of low hills and winds through these hills for about twenty miles before dropping back down into the broad Tanana River valley. After another 25 or 30 miles, it crosses the Nenana River, a tributary of the Tanana, at the town of Nenana. The road then follows the Nenana River upstream toward Denali. For the most part, the Parks Highway is in excellent shape, two traffic lanes plus a third climbing lane on hills, and with broad shoulders. A few miles north of Denali it narrows down and develops some fairly significant heaving, causing traffic to slow to 45-50 mph (at least for the sensible drivers). Just before the park entry is the small village of Denali Park, with a few shops, restaurants, hotels, and outfitters for rafting, jeeping (outside the park), and tours in and out of the Park. For those familiar with Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, think of Estes Park on a much smaller and less refined manner.

Upon entering Denali National Park, we went immediately to the Jacob’s Creek campground registration, located at the Jacob’s Creek Mercantile just a half mile inside the park. This is the only place where we have so far made campground reservations, and I’m glad we did. We arrived shortly after 3:00 pm and the campgrounds were filling rapidly. Like most National Park campgrounds, these are dry sites (no utilities), but they do have clean restrooms with real flush toilets, and showers and laundry in the nearby Mercantile building. Best of all is the cost -- $11.00 a night with the Federal senior pass.

We then went to the Wilderness Activity Center to purchase tickets to the park shuttle buses and arrange a “Discovery Hike,” a ranger-led interpretive hike out in the tundra. There was a little running around to do since we had to go to the Visitor Center to select the hike we wanted, get a voucher for that hike (which is limited to ten people), then return to the Wilderness Activity Center to actually pay the fee and arrange the shuttle bus. But the facilities were all within a 15 or 20 minute walk from the campground, so we got in a bit of much-needed exercise after all those miles of sitting on our butts in the motorhome. Finally, it was back to the campground for a late dinner and packing for tomorrow’s first tour up into the park.

Day 18 – Monday 7/25/2011

Fairbanks

Before starting today’s activities, I forgot to mention yesterday that as we passed through Delta Junction, we reached the “official” end of the Alaska Highway at Milepost 1387. It is marked by a small monument at the highway’s intersection with the Richardson Highway coming up from Valdez. It was from this point that construction of the Alaska Highway was begun by the Army Engineers back in 1942. Westbound construction began at the same time from Dawson Creek, BC, and the two crews finally met at Contact Creek on the BC/Yukon border at or around Mile 568. I’m not sure of the exact point of meeting, but Contact Creek is the traditional meeting point in most literature.

We just hung around Fairbanks today. Fairbanks is a city of approximately 30-35,000 located on the Chena River, a tributary of the Tanana River which we followed in since our rejoining with the Alaska Highway at Tok a couple of days ago. It was established as the center of mining activity back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, and remains the economic hub of the Alaskan interior. It still reflects its blue collar heritage, and has been described as being more about money than culture.

First on today’s agenda was doing laundry at the park laundry room. By then it was lunch time, so we heated up yesterday’s leftover pizza and ate in the RV. While waiting for the laundry I called my friend Fred, who lives in Fairbanks to get some tips on things one must absolutely not miss while here. It was with Fred that I made my previous trip to Alaska back in 1996, when we took the ferry up to Haines and then drove into Fairbanks, but that’s another story. We originally hoped to visit with Fred and his wife, Marty, while we were here, but as fate would have it, he was in Denver to have surgery on his back while we were in Fairbanks, and he’ll be back here when we get home. Anyway, Fred’s number one recommendation was the University of Alaska’s Museum of the North. He also recommended Pioneer Park, a river tour on the riverboat Discovery, and perhaps a drive up to the Chena Hot Springs. His description of the riverboat tour sounded too touristy, and it is 50 or 60 miles to the hot springs, so we decided to focus on the Museum of the North and Pioneer Park. Plus, I wanted to get the truck’s oil changed and routine service done after the long drive up, so we needed to set aside an hour or so sometime today or tomorrow for that.

Since Pioneer Park is on our way out of town tomorrow, we’ll hit that in the morning. So this afternoon it was off to the Museum of the North. The University of Alaska Fairbanks campus is a collection of modern buildings situated on a low hill on the northwest side of the City of Fairbanks, just three or four miles down College Road from our RV park. The museum is located in a very modern building that won numerous architectural design awards after its completion in 2002. It is both a natural history and cultural history museum, and also contains galleries exhibiting permanent and rotating collections of both historical and contemporary artwork. In addition, there is a small auditorium which shows short films about the museum itself, the science of the Aurora Borealis, and the Alaskan winter. The film about the museum is titled You Are Here, and it is an outstanding film, not only for the content but in the highly thoughtful, imaginative way it is presented. The other two films were also well done and informative, but You Are Here is a “don’t miss” feature if you ever visit the museum. The major portion of the first floor of the museum is dedicated to the cultural heritage of the peoples of Alaska, both historical and contemporary. It is divided into geographic areas of the state, and each area contains well-designed and executed exhibits of the geology, mineralogy, wildlife, and peoples of the region.

The upper floor contains the art gallery and its collections of historical and modern art of various media types. Much, in fact most, of the art of the native peoples is practical in nature, such as ivory carvings, beadwork on clothing and the like. It’s sometimes hard to believe how the ancient people were able to create such masterpieces, given the limited materials and tools they had at their disposal.

The south-facing atrium of the museum is a two-story high glass wall that overlooks the city of Fairbanks and the Alaska Range on the horizon. On a clear day you can see Mt McKinley from here, but unfortunately today was not such a clear day. We could, however, see the smoke rising from the wildfires several miles to the south which created the hazy conditions we drove through.

Leaving the museum, we stopped at Jiffy Lube for the oil change and Safeway to pick up a couple of small steaks to grille for dinner. We also took a short drive through the city center to see downtown Fairbanks, which probably hasn’t changed much in the past 30 or 40 years. The road back to our RV park passes a wildlife sanctuary which we had read is home to a number of sandhill cranes. We didn’t see them yesterday on our way in, but there were several there today so we stopped and got out our binoculars to take a peek. I attempted to get some photos, but they were several hundred yards away in a large field – too far for me to get decent pictures with my 300mm lens.

Back at the campsite I grilled the steaks while Jeanette baked a large potato in the microwave. Throw in some nice Merlot and a little soft music and we had a lovely ending to a pleasant day.

Tomorrow it’s off to Denali.

Day 17 – Sunday 7/24/2011

East of Delta Junction to Fairbanks – 118 Miles

It was 61 degrees and cloudy with high overcast at wake-up time this morning at our campground ten miles east of Delta Junction. After a shower at the campground, we drove into Delta for breakfast and 10 am Mass at the local Catholic church, Our Lady of Sorrows. The church, like all the Catholic churches we've seen in small towns along the way, is located down a side road, just past the town library and the Mormon church. It is small, seating probably 75 0r 80 at most. Behind the Altar, the Crucifix is mounted on a simple backdrop of common fir plywood. But what is not common is that natural grain of the plywood creates a recurring image if the Risen Christ with his arms outstretched. Not only that, over the head of Jesus is a wavy pattern in the grain that, for all the world, looks like the Holy Spirit descending as a dove. Right now I'm kicking myself for not going out and getting my camera so I could have taken a photo of this before we left.

We happened to be there the week that the pastor was on vacation up in Eagle, so we just had a communion service led by a layman. Afterward, we stayed for coffee and a slice of cake in the church hall. We asked one of the ladies how often they did the coffee and snacks, and she said, “We do it every week, otherwise we’d forget when it was time to do it again.” I guess that is the norm for the easy-going life in a small town in the interior of Alaska.

Just west of Delta Junction, the highway crosses the Delta River. The Alaska Pipeline crosses the river alongside the highway bridge, supported by an elaborate suspension bridge-like structure. We stopped so I could get a couple of pictures. Speaking of which, I fully intended to include a couple of photos with each blog post, but I’ve found that with taking so many pictures I just haven’t had time to select, edit, re-size, and add the pictures. Probably what will happen is that I won’t get around to doing the photos until I get home and post them on my Smugmug gallery. (Smugmug is an internet photo hosting site; my gallery URL is jmcarp.smugmug.com – no Alaska photos there yet.)

We stopped again a few miles farther down the road to get a shot of the wide Tanana River which parallels the highway for several miles. Normally from this spot there should have been a very good view of the Alaska Range with its snow-covered and glaciated peaks several miles off to the south. I had been noticing a thick haze as we drove northwestward, and as I stepped out of the motorhome I immediately knew what was causing it – smoke. Another person stopped there confirmed it – there is a forest fire burning somewhere south of Fairbanks, too far away for there to be a visible plume of smoke, but close enough to be easily smelled and to create the hazy conditions. Wildfires are a way of life in Alaska and northern Canada, with the vast, almost limitless forests in the region. We’ve driven for miles through old burns on this trip, and most of them have been as large as, and in most cases much larger than the Hayman fire that burned so much of Colorado a few years ago. It’s interesting to see the various stages of re-growth, depending upon how long ago the fires took place. Nature truly heals itself.

Before getting to Fairbanks, you pass through the small community of North Pole, Alaska. This town seems to be built entirely on promoting Christmas in one way or another. We stopped at the visitor center as we came into town to see what it was all about. The visitor center is located in an old, settler type log cabin with a sod roof. I’m not sure if it is sponsored by the town or if it is a private enterprise, but it is operated by two charming ladies – mother and daughter (the mother must be close to 90 years old) – who spare no expense in describing every detail of the town, right down to the street lights that are shaped like candy canes. The main attraction is a large building called Santa’s House, which is a giant Christmas store, filled with thousands and thousands of Christmas decorations, Christmas tree ornaments, stuffed reindeer toys, cheap made-in-China Nativity scenes, and of course, tee shirts of every size and color. During most of the year, Santa Claus himself is in attendance, and little kids can sit on his lap and tell him the first installment of their Christmas wish lists. But alas, like the rest of us mortal beings, even Santa needs a time of rest every year, and he was on vacation while we were there. It’s probably just as well, since there were two tour buses in the parking lot and the store was full of overweight seniors in Bermuda shorts – probably more than Santa’s lap could have handled.

And wouldn’t you know it – also in the parking lot was the silver Nissan truck and travel trailer of the couple from Whitehorse we’ve more or less been traveling with since Dawson City. We hadn’t planned to meet again, but here we were. They hadn’t made plans for a place to stay tonight so we told them the name and location of the RV park we had selected. We went our separate ways after Santa’s house, but sure enough, they pulled into the park right after we arrived this afternoo. So once again we had friends to share a brewski and snacks with as the day unwound.

We’ll probably stay around Fairbanks for a day or so, and then head down toward Denali on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Day 16 – Saturday 7/23/20

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.

Day 15 – Friday 7/22/2011

Dawson City, YT to West Fork BLM Campground, Mile 49 of Taylor Highway, AK

Another clear, cloudless morning with the temperature at its usual 50 degrees. You’d think perhaps the thermometer was broken, but no, we have two of them – one at the back and one at the front of the motorhome and they’re consistently within a degree of each other. The clear skies are a good thing because today we tackled the “Top of the World Highway,” a 79-mile stretch of mainly gravel and packed dirt that is notoriously famous for being slippery and some say downright treacherous when it’s wet. So a string of three or four days without rain as we’ve had now is a good thing.

As we were drinking our morning coffee, Jeanette mentioned the strangest phenomenon. She had awoken at 1:00 am and looked out to see the red glow of the sunset outside the window of the motorhome, which was facing basically north. She awoke again at 4:00 am to see the red glow of sunrise at almost the same location, which seemed very puzzling. We thought about that all day, and it wasn’t until tonight that I realized what was happening. At home, we’re used to seeing the sun rise just a few degrees north of due east and set just a few degrees north of due west. However, at this far northern latitude (64 degrees at Dawson), the sun’s track is radically different. It rises really far north of due east, creeping above the horizon way to the northeast – almost to the north-northeast. It then sweeps across the southern sky at a low angle until it sets correspondingly far to the northwest. I actually watched the sun tonight as it traversed the western sky almost horizontally until it went behind a hill. Of course in winter it rises and sets at similar angle far to the southeast and southwest, making the days very short.

But back to the events of the day…We left the campground a few minutes after nine and drove down to the ferry landing. The TOW starts with a brief ferry ride across the Yukon River at the north end of Dawson. The river is quite wide at this point – I’d guess about a quarter mile – and running swift. We had a short wait of perhaps ten minutes for the ferry to return to our side and disgorge its load of only a couple of cars before boarding and setting of on our day’s adventure. The ferry itself is a miniature version of the Port Aransas ferry, for the sake of reference for family and friends from Texas, and holds probably eight normal size passenger cars – fewer, of course if part of the load is a truck, tour bus, or an RV or two. Because of the strong current, the ferry swings fairly far downstream, then churns its way back upriver to the landing on the far shore. It takes about five minutes to get from one side of the river to the other.

The road immediately began a steep climb up the hill on the west side of the river. At one point there is a pull-out with a spectacular view of Dawson City far below. The road then turns right and begins its journey over the Top of the World. The first half dozen miles or so are paved, but it soon transitions to a well-graded gravel road. Because the tree line is so low here, about 3000 feet, we were soon above the trees and into the Krumholz zone, the transition between timber and tundra that we see in Colorado at about 11,000 to 11,500 feet. Once on the top of the hill, the highway stays at an elevation of 3000 to 3600 feet, which keeps it in this zone of stunted spruce trees and low willow-like trees for most of the 60 miles to the Alaska border. The road follows the long spine of a mountain ridge, dipping here and there and crossing numerous low saddles from one side of the ridge to the other. The view is spectacular – a range of rugged mountains far to the north and miles and miles of ridgelines to the south as far as you can see, and always steep drops into narrow, vee-shaped valleys on the sides of the ridge. The road is fairly wide, and generally well-maintained. There are short sections of pavement – what is commonly known as chip and seal – here and there, but never for more than a few hundred yards at a time. My general impression of this portion of the road is that it’s similar to some of the better unimproved county roads in Colorado, only better in the sense that there is almost zero washboarding.

The last few miles before the Alaska border the road once again reverts to pavement, and it climbs to its highest elevation, approximately 4200 feet. Here it is truly above timberline and in the tundra.

The border crossing sits high on a windswept slope. It looks like a miserable place to live and work (and the customs officers, both American and Canadian are certain to live in the couple of residential structures adjacent to the border because it’s 60 miles to the nearest town in one direction and 120 miles in the other). It makes one wonder who the customs officers pissed off to cause them to be assigned here. But perhaps some like this duty and this lifestyle – it is layed back, waaay layed back.

On the Alaskan side of the border the road immediately digresses to a narrow, packed dirt road. It is similar to some of the “better” off-pavement Forest Service roads in Colorado, complete with ruts, dips, potholes, and bumps. Imagining this road in the rain, I can see why it gets its reputation. And yes, they do bring tour buses up this road.

Just four miles from the border is the “settlement” of Boundary, Alaska, a collection of three or four decrepit buildings on the side of the road that once served (and may soon again serve) as a roadhouse, complete with a gas pump and café. A new owner has taken over, and as we pulled in he and his son were in the process of installing a satellite antenna on the roof so he could offer wi-fi to passing tourists. Imagine that – an internet café in the heart of the Alaskan wilderness. It may not be such a far-fetched idea, though. If he can get the place up and running and get the tour buses to stop there, he could make a passable living. That’s what keeps the Braeburn Lodge on the Whitehorse to Dawson City highway, where we stopped for our giant cinnamon bun a couple of days ago, afloat and it could be the same for this guy. Heck, if he just got a couple of decent restrooms going, the buses would stop here rather than the rest stop a couple of miles up the road where there’s only a couple of outhouses. When we passed that simple gravel pull-out, there were two tour buses stopped and lines of tourist waiting to use the “facilities.”

Nineteen miles from the Alaska border, the Top of the World Highway intersects the Taylor Highway, marking the end of the TOW. Calling these two dirt roads highways is a bit of a stretch, but if one could take a time machine back to the early 20^th century in the lower 48 states, I guess this was the norm for our country’s road system. A few years ago I read a book about the first people to cross the US from coast to coast in an automobile, and roads like these would probably have seemed like a luxury to them.

The road conditions began to improve slightly as we continued the 25 miles or so into the little village of Chicken, Alaska. Chicken began its life as a mining town back in the late 1800’s. The story goes that the original settlers wanted to call the town Ptarmigan because those wild, chicken-like birds were common in the area. The only problem was, no one in the town knew how to spell Ptamigan, so they just called it Chicken.

Only one significant building from its glory years remains – a combination trinket shop, bar, liquor store, and café known as “Downtown Chicken, Alaska.” We stopped and bought some barbequed chicken to go for tonight’s dinner, and while we waited for the chicken in Chicken I used their free wi-fi to upload yesterday’s blog post. Who knows when I’ll have the chance to upload this one; maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day.

South of Chicken, we finally hit pavement. The road follows a creek down toward Tetlin Junction, a few miles east of Tok, where it intersects the Alaska Highway. There are several small-scale mining operations in the creek, mainly using small bulldozers and sluices. There must be at least a small profit in this mom-and-pop gold mining, because they seem to have been here for a while.

As we were preparing to leave the campground in Dawson this morning, I was talking to the people camped next us, a couple from Whitehorse in a small, 13-ft “Escape” travel trailer (similar to a Casita of Scamp, but made in Canada). They told us of a campground south of Chicken that they had stayed at a few years ago and remembered as being near a river. So as we were driving today we checked our Church’s Campground Guide and saw the BLM West Fork Campground at Mile 49 of the Taylor Highway. That was the only campground along this stretch of road, so it had to be it. It was easy to spot with its large BLM sign, so we pulled in and found a nice back-in campsite in the trees – no services of course, but only $5.00 with our Federal geezer pass. It’s good to be back in the USA and to be able to take advantage of these terrific bennies that our leaders in Washington so graciously provide.

We hadn’t been here a half hour before our new-found friends from Whitehorse rolled in and set up camp just a couple of hundred feet away. So after dinner we took our folding chairs and strolled down to share a campfire with them and another neighbor, a motorcyclist from Maryland who’s making a three-month bucket list tour of Alaska and western Canada. We meet such interesting people along the way – just one of the many reasons we enjoy this style of travel.