Sorry it has taken a few days to get caught up again.....
We have been on the road for the past several days even though we have been here for since Monday I think! :)
We were able to leave Saturday morning around 7 AM on a clear bright day! It was beautiful! The trip across the Yukon River on the ferry was quite an experience. It is a free ferry and only took about 10 minutes going across. Andy/Charlotte and Don/Connie were able to go together on the ferry but we were able to go by ourselves. There wasn't anyone waiting like on Friday am. So we headed up the road to the "Top of the World Highway". It began as a paved road and quickly became dirt and gravel. We saw some gorgeous scenery and it wasn't near as bad as what I had imagine it to EXCEPT for the dirt and dust and gravel. It is a long stretch of road about 140 miles that took us about 6 hours to drive. We climbed quite a bit and the views from above were so pretty. We finally got to the border about 2 1/2hrs after we left. The road did have some hairpin curves and narrow roads but 2 vehicles could pretty easily manuever around and they weren't very long before the road widened out. We made it through the border in good shape this time! It felt good to be back in the USA!!!! We drove to the big town of Chicken,Alaska.... it has 1 store and a post office. The store is a gift store and gas station. We then finally got to drive on a paved road for quite a ways but it wasn't near as good some of the roads we had been on. So finally making it to Tok,Alaska about 4ish.... and we even gained an hour. We stayed at Tok RV Village for the night. It was a nice park with full hookups. We left there on Sunday am destined for Fairbanks. It is about 130 miles to Fairbanks from Tok. We drove along side of a mountain range all the way there.
At Delta Junction, we were at the end of the Alaska Highway! It is at the visitor center and 2 HUGE styrofoam mosquitoes greeted us! We now believe we have mosquitoes that big! They are very big around here and everywhere! We drove back about 9 miles to a meat market and everyone got either some meat or summer sausage or sticks. They process beef, elk, buffalo, reindeer. Of course they had samples and we tasted it all!
We arrived at Fairbanks around 2 and set up the rigs. It is nice to be here for a few days even though we really have been on the go since we got here. The park is nice but the spaces are tight. We were glad we are in a pull through but getting out may be tricky!
Yesterday we got up around 4:30 to be ready to leave at 5:45 for a bus ride to the Artic Circle! It was a very long day and a very long bus ride! The bus was nice so the seats weren't bad but it was just a long ride on paved and mostly gravel roads. We drove 200 miles north of Fairbanks to the Artic Circle. We stopped a few places on the way...one being a gift shop at Joy,Alaska. A couple has built this gift shop in the middle of nowhere. They had all kinds of Artic Circle clothing etc. among other things. The roads we drove on are used by the oil line people so the roads are not the best. We basically followed the pipeline all the way up. That road is about the only road to go to Prudhoe Bay which is about 200 more miles north. We couldn't even have gotten up there because you need a special permit to get even remotely closer. We stopped right under the pipeline and took pictures. We stopped for a bathroom break at the Yukon River Camp. The Yukon River bridge is the only bridge in Alaska where you can cross the river via a bridge. We also came back and ate supper there. When we got to the Artic Circle around 2:30PM our guide had quite a "ceremony" for us! She threw out the red carpet and it had yellow lines on it and we got our picture taken and officially greeted at theArtic Circle. It was suprising how green it was and the trees and grass growing. It was in the tundra but it wasn't barren like we thought it would be. It was cool and raining slightly. We even had a snack at the Artic Circle.. "tundra cake and perma frost icing".....
We got back to the River Camp around 5 and ate supper and then were on our way once again at 6. We drove back to Fairbanks and arrived around 10:45 getting home at 11 PM.... What an experience it was! We had people from all over with us...
It was still very much in daylight when we got back...so I took a picture of the daylight at 11 PM!
This morning we got on a bus again! around 8:30 and took a tour of downtown Fairbanks. Our first stop was the Pioneer Park...it is an old "town" replica of Fairbanks in the gold rush days. Nothing was open so we walked around and then went to the pipeline visitor center. Our next stop was the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. We toured on our own for about an hour. One very interesting thing we saw was called "the Place Where You Go Listen"..... it is a light and sound composition of what the earth is doing continually. We listened and saw how the earth sounds. Very neat!
So that is what we have been doing the past few days. I think we are leaving here tomorrow morning for Denali for a few days. We haven't seen very many animals and hope to in Denali! We even got a glimpse of Mt. McKinley today but it has been pretty cloudy the past few days..stay tuned!
Until next time!
BJ
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