Category: Alaska Yukon 2017

We had a nice drive today. Mostly clear blue skies and in the low 20s. We made a stop for a light lunch in Tok at Fast Eddies again – shared a plate of halibut fish and chips – it was early considering when we finished breakfast, but we figured it would keep us going until we stopped for supper. The mountain ranges today were pretty spectacular.

We decided to make our stop at the side of the road overlooking the mountain peaks. It was a pull out about 20 miles from the Alaska/Yukon border, and although we stopped there late afternoon, we only had two vehicles pull in the whole time through to the next morning. We had a good visit with one of the people who stopped – he was retired from the military, having lived in Alaska for 10 years. He was pulling a fishing boat and had a tent platform on his truck. He now lives in Minnesota but comes back up to fish and hunt every year in the late summer/early fall. We finished the evening with a spectacular sunset.

In the morning, we had breakfast and headed out – next stop Kluane Lake!

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.