Blog

Thursday and Friday were quiet days, mostly in the trailer. We did get out for a walk along a bike path beside the highway on Thursday. It never really did more than mist that day but we’ve needed a bit of a break so we really didn’t mind taking it easy. After doing laundry at the campground on Friday morning, we drove into town and looked at the site where the town of Valdez used to be before the 1964 major earthquake hit – the largest ever to hit North America at 9.2. It destroyed the town so when they rebuilt, they moved a few miles away since the old site had been condemned.

We drove down by the waterfront and enjoyed watching a marmot eating on the grass down by the ferry dock. He didn’t seem at all concerned about the cars.

While at the waterfront, we also stopped to try and buy some fresh halibut. We found two fisheries that had retail sales, but they only had frozen fish. We didn’t want as much as they were selling – the filets were huge. However, as we were leaving the second place, there was a fisherman who had dropped off fish and he offered us about a pound of halibut pieces – all he wanted to keep of what was in his bag were the “cheeks” – which are considered a delicacy. So we went back to the trailer and fried up the fresh halibut for supper – can’t get much fresher than that!

Saturday morning we woke to higher clouds with a bit of blue sky showing periodically. We packed up the trailer and left to drive through Keystone Canyon and the Thompson Pass. It wasn’t socked in like it had been when we arrived in Valdez. We actually had some nice views – some with a few low clouds, and some with bits of sun poking through. The mountains are quite spectacular here – definitely would come back and try and get a clear sunny day, but that kind of weather is unusual here. We had intermittent storm clouds during the drive, but not any significant rain – we did see a bit of a rainbow a few times.

We decided to try stopping at the side of the road for the night rather than take an organized campground. We found a place, 20 miles southwest of Tok, tucked back off the road near a small river. There was another camper here already in the parking lot and later on, a motorcycle drove in and set up camp for the night.

Tomorrow we’ll head out east of Tok and south towards the Alaska/Yukon border.

We left our campsite Tuesday morning, headed to Valdez. About 20 miles south, we decided we had better turn around and head back towards Anchorage. Our truck had a message saying we needed DEF (Desiel Exhaust Fluid) and we would only get another 650 km before the engine would throttle back and we would be limited to a very slow drive. Paul had put DEF in the night before at the campground because the first indicator had come on saying it was low, but despite it overflowing when he filled it, the warning had not gone off. We figured it was better to head to Anchorage where we knew we could get to a Ford service centre. Just after we turned around, the warning suddenly cleared. It seems the computer just needed some time to clear itself! Oh well, we had to drive almost back to the campground we had just left before we could find a place to turn around again. Towing a 28’ trailer means you can’t just make a u-turn anywhere!

We had a cloudy day for driving and as we headed through the pass just outside of Valdez, we had terrible fog. The clouds were so low and there was construction as well – we had a few miles of very poor visibility and stressful driving. However, as we headed down the pass, we got below the clouds and we could see again. After checking out a couple of campgrounds, we ended up pulling into a KOA right off the main highway. The weather forecast is for colder and wetter weather and we decided it might be nice to have electric hookups if we are going to be sitting in the trailer for a few days.

We did a quick grocery run and then drove out the fish hatchery road a bit. At the fish hatchery, were millions of pink salmon trying to get up the fish ladder. We saw 5 or 6 sea lions enjoying the multitudes of fish. They certainly won’t be hungry and it couldn’t get much easier fishing for them! We also saw some harbour seals on the way to the hatchery. A few hundred yards down from the hatchery, people were fishing right off the shore and catching lots of salmon – some silver and lots of pink salmon with the occasional trout.

Wednesday morning we still had low clouds, but no rain so we took to the road and drove up a gravel/dirt road to see some nice scenery. It was about a 9 km long road, but about 6 km in, we turned around since the road became quite narrow – fine if you had a jeep, just not great for a full sized pick up!

We then headed back up to the pass where we had come through on Tuesday – two great waterfalls along the way – Horsetail Falls and Bridal Veil Falls.

Our plan was to head right to the top of the pass because there was a spectacular canyon to drive through, but there were low clouds again so we didn’t bother. Instead, we headed back to the fish hatchery and ladder – more sea lions again, some people fishing and two eagles were our sights.

The weather forecast for Thursday and Friday is rain and cold. We’re going to stay in Valdez until Saturday – hopefully the weather will clear by then and we’ll have a nice view leaving! Then it is back up through Tok and eventually to Whitehorse.