Blog Archives

Whitehorse to Watson Lake II

9/25/2023

We drove the 20 miles or so through the pass from Skagway to the Yukon border, and had the most extensive grilling yet at the Canadian border. We aren’t sure if the immigration agent was just bored and wanted to talk, or if she really thought there was some sort of a problem with us, but she kept us there a while because she said she couldn’t figure out how to put our Belize registered vehicle in the computer. The whole time she was trying to do that, she was asking us about everything, including things like our best estimate of how many litres of wine remained in our two opened boxes. She wanted to know to the dollar how much cash we had, and when we told her we have cash from Canada, the US, Mexico, and Belize, she wanted us to convert all the non-Canadian currencies to Canadian dollars and give her a total in Canadian dollars. After watching us count cash, add together what we each carried, and run the non-Canadian amounts through a converter for what seemed like forever, she finally said it didn’t seem like we were going to come up with more than $10,000 each and told us we could stop, which was sort of stupid because I don’t think our total was much over $1,000, US or Canadian. After more questions about the dogs, what we did for work before we were retired, whether or not we were really retired, and a few other truly random things, she finally waved us through, mostly, I think, because another car had pulled up behind us. We drove to Whitehorse where we had a much anticipated shopping trip at the Real Canadian Superstore. We got permission to stay in the car park for the night, so we took the dogs for a walk along the river and settled in for the evening.

In the morning, we took a wonderful five mile walk along the river in Whitehorse from the Klondike paddle steamer to the dam past the fish ladder. It was chilly but sunny, and very interesting, with a nice mix of history and nature. We liked Whitehorse when we passed through on our way to Alaska, and we still liked it on our way back.

We then got on the road to Watson Lake, and marveled at the beautiful fall foliage. We got to Watson Lake around 6 and went to the visitor center to get the milepost guide for the Cassiar, and then went to the grocery store for the local fireweed honey we couldn’t get in July. We were glad we’d walked in Whitehorse in the morning because it was raining in Watson Lake, but that turned out to be a good thing because it meant the fires were out and the Cassiar Highway was open.

0 Comments

Skagway

9/25/2023

0 Comments

On Monday morning, we got up at 4:15 AM and were at the ferry terminal at shortly after five, and we were the second RV in line. We had time to get breakfast in our camper before we had to board, which was again done very efficiently. The ferry ride was uneventful, although between slightly better weather and daylight, we saw a lot more scenery than we did on the way from Haines to Juneau. For the return trip, we stopped in Haines, but then proceeded on to Skagway. We had been told we could get the dogs out of the camper and walk them in Haines, but with the efficiency of the parking on the car deck, we didn’t have room to squeeze between the camper and the semi trailer next to it to get the dogs out, so they had to cross their legs and wait for Skagway. That turned out to be a good thing for us, because instead of walking the dogs we watched the loading process in Haines, and saw another traveller named Andrew who we had been meeting up with periodically through Alaska getting on the ferry. We waited for him to get to the upper deck, and then had time during the hour sail from Haines to Skagway to catch up with him and find out what he’d been doing since the last time we’d seen him.

In Skagway, we exited the ferry and drove to the more inland of the two RV campgrounds in Skagway, which was an easy decision for us since the other was very near the cruise ship docks. Tom had to do a little work, and we had laundry to catch up, so we booked two nights at $10/night for a spot with no hook ups. We took the dogs for a walk and then went out for a delicious king crab dinner with beer at Woades, which, despite Skagway also being a cruise ship town, wasn’t quite as crazy expensive as it would have been in Juneau.

We spent Tuesday morning with Tom working online while I did laundry and worked on the blog. In the afternoon we took the dogs for a walk around Lower Dewey Lake, which we expected to be a made for cruise ship tourists perambulating path, but which was in fact a fairly strenuous hike up a mountain with over 800’ of elevation gain through dense pine forest and around an undeveloped lake. Because Tom wasn’t done his project, we booked a third night in Skagway, and when I told the campground host how much we enjoyed the Lower Dewey Lake hike, she suggested some more hiking trails on the other side of the docks, which we did the next day and found equally enjoyable and deserted. Skagway gets definite points for resisting the cruise ship mentality, since you barely need to be off the sidewalk before you’re in the wilderness. We can’t really imagine what it must be like to live in that very small town in the winter when the cruise ships aren’t docking, when the population of the town definitely can’t support all of the businesses, but at the end of the tourist season, they manage to keep the frontier town feel despite the influx of tourists.

We left Skagway in the pouring rain on Thursday morning and tried to make a stop at the Dyea village in the Klondike National Historic Site, but we got to an 11’2” bridge so we would have had to walk the last two miles in the rain. We decided that seeing lots of eagles on the way in qualified us to claim a park visit, as well as walking by all the Klondike National Historic Site buildings in Skagway, so we called it good and got on the road to Whitehorse.

0 Comments

Juneau

9/25/2023

0 Comments

We pulled into Juneau early, but it was 9:00pm, so it was dark, as well as still raining. Based on iOverlander reviews, we parked at the West Glacier Trail trailhead. We weren’t too sure it was okay, but there were a couple of carloads of young people hanging out and partying, so Tom asked them if it was both legal to park there, and if we would be crashing their party. They assured us that it was legal and we wouldn’t be bothering them, so we took the dogs for a last walk and went to bed.

It was still raining in the morning, so we decided not to hike the West Glacier Trail. We headed into Juneau with a stop at Safeway to shop. We left the “surburban” part of Juneau where all the shopping centers are, and took the highway to the downtown area near where the cruise ships come in so we could see the capitol building - our 42nd! We walked around the capital district for a couple of hours, and then went over to Douglas Island, where we went for a hike around the Treadwell mine ruins. We drove up to the Eaglecrest ski area, a city owned ski area, where RVs are allowed to park for the night. We were the only RV in the parking lot, surrounded by beautiful mountains and quiet.

In the morning, we left the ski area and drove to the end of the highway on Douglas Island, where we saw more beautiful waterfalls, a bunch of bald eagles, and a golden eagle which looked like one of the dragons from Game of Thrones as it flew in front of us over the highway. We went back over the bridge into Juneau and stopped to see the humpback whale statue and fountain. After running a few errands, we went to the West Glacier trailhead of the Mendenhall glacier and hiked about 5 miles towards the glacier. We found that due to flooding we could not get all the way to the glacier, but it was still a beautiful hike. It was late afternoon by the time we got back to the truck, but with a few more hours of daylight we drove to the end of the road as far north as you can drive out of Juneau. There wasn’t much to see besides more beautiful scenery, so we turned around and stopped for the night at a pull out about halfway back to the ferry terminal where we had to be at 5 AM the following morning.

We had taken the ferry to Juneau mostly because as Alaska’s capital, we had to visit it to check it off our capital list. However, we found ourselves charmed and fascinated with the state capital that can only be reached by air or water, but that manages to feel very much like a well run mid-sized American city. The city itself is in what looked to us like three distinct parts: the suburban shopping center interspersed with standard suburban neighborhoods, downtown with the cruise ship docks and government and business buildings, and Douglas Island, which is like another suburb but with small businesses instead of the big box stores. On all sides of this cloverleaf of a city, there is access to outdoor attractions, including fishing, hiking, skiing, rock climbing, and probably whatever else anyone may want to do out of doors. There are trailheads and small parks any direction you go, and from what we saw, the people of Juneau are using them. We had been a little worried that we wouldn’t like it because the downtown cruise ship port has to handle at least four or five cruise ships a day, but we found that most of the cruise people don’t go far from the ship, even in the downtown area, and the only downside we saw was that restaurant prices were exorbitant and we ditched our plan to have a seafood dinner. We had scheduled to be there only over the weekend, getting there Friday evening and leaving early Monday morning, and while we had initially been a little worried that we wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves, as we left we agreed that we could have spent at least a few more days enjoying Juneau and the surrounding area.

0 Comments

Tok to Haines

9/25/2023

0 Comments

The morning we left the Wrangell-St. Elias NP, it wasn’t quite as cold as the previous morning, but it was raining, so we bagged our plan to walk the Caribou Creek Trail and headed out towards Tok. We stopped at the visitor center, and then made it to Tok by lunchtime, where we filled with fuel, filled with water at the gas station, then had lunch in the town visitor center parking lot before taking the dogs on a 4 mile plus walk on the walking trails through the town. The highlight of the walk was seeing a trailer pulling three decapitated bull moose heads, obviously heading for a taxidermist. We weren’t sure whether to be disgusted or impressed, but opted for impressed since right now moose hunting is THE THING in Alaska and as tourists, we need to accept it. We drove about 60 miles southeast of Tok on the Alaska Highway towards the Canadian border and stopped at a small, nice, and free campground on Yarger Lake. With us, 8 of 10 sites were full for the night, but it was very quiet with nary a generator to be heard.

The next morning, we left Lakeview Campground and drove through lots of construction with pilot trucks to the small Seaton Recreational Area about 15 miles from the Alaska/Yukon border. There, we went for a short but pleasant hike through an area that has been reclaimed from being a construction staging area for the Alaska Highway and the Alaska Pipeline. We then drove on into Canada and drove on the very frost heaved Alaska Highway as far as Burwash Landing, which is about midway down Kluane Lake. We found another free campground on iOverlander, which was the weirdest so far since somebody is obviously doing a lot of work to make it nice, but it is totally abandoned and we were the only ones there. It’s right on a very large lake, and if it were summer and we had had kayaks and paddle boards we would have planned to spend a week there. Instead, we took the dogs for a couple of mile walk on a really nice trail along the lake shore, and settled in for a very quiet night.

We left the free campground without seeing a single soul there, on the way in, or on the way out, and drove to the visitor center at Sheep Mountain. It was cold and windy, and we spent a couple of hours talking to people in the parking lot and trying to get excited about hiking the Sheep Mountain trail, which had been recommended by some people we met who live in Juneau. By the time we got done talking to people, the clouds had cleared, the wind had died, and we took a six mile walk around the base of the mountain to the river in our shirtsleeves. We saw lots of Dall sheep on the mountain, had some beautiful views, and while we didn’t see any bears, we saw a lot of bear tracks at the end of the trail (for us) by the river.

We drove from Sheep Mountain through Haines Junction towards Kathleen Lake. We stopped at an iOverlander recommended pull off which is signed by the Yukon road department, and while we were right on the highway, we had a beautiful view up the creek through the valley. Traffic was less than a car every 10 minutes on the dead end road between Haines Junction and Haines, so we had a quiet night. We shared the space with one other truck camper, but we never even saw them.

In the morning, it was raining, but we pulled on our new rain gear and drove to Kathleen Lake, where we hiked parts of a few trails before lunch, then drove to Haines. The weather was cloudy and cool, but the scenery was still stunning, both on the hikes and on the drive to Haines. With the hour setback coming from Canada into Alaska, we got to Haines a little before 6 and found a pull off just north of the ferry terminal. We were right on the water, and it was still cold and windy and rainy, but we were cozy in our camper.

In the morning, we drove into Chilkoot SP to look for bears, but we only saw bald eagles. Then we went into Haines, where we walked around and saw the town and Ft. Seward. We went to a restaurant where I had the normal halibut fish fry, which was delicious, although Tom had it grilled instead of fried and he said it was dry. We stopped and talked to a gift shop owner, then went and checked in for the ferry to Juneau. We got all the paperwork done and had an hour to kill, so we went back to the park to look for bears, but there still weren’t any. We went back and got in line to load on the ferry, which went very smoothly and we left early. The ferry was very comfortable, and we spent the four and a half hour ride looking at scenery while it was still light and not too foggy, and then catching up on computer stuff.

0 Comments

Wrangell-St. Elias NP

9/25/2023

0 Comments

We left the Little Tosina River CG in pouring rain after a sunny start, but by the time we got to the west entrance of the Wrangell-St. Elias NP, the sun was out again. We stopped there to get online and make ferry reservations to Juneau, and found that while we could get to Juneau whenever we wanted, we couldn’t get out until Monday, Sept. 11. We booked Haines to Juneau on Friday, Sept. 8, with a ferry out to Skagway on Monday, Sept. 11. This left us five days to get to Haines, so we decided to go in the north Nabesna Road entrance to the NP at Slana and camp and hike for a couple of days. The camping is free pretty much wherever we wanted to park, and hiking trails run everywhere off of the main road because one of the primary uses for the park is subsistence hunting for Alaska natives, so the entire park is super accessible. We went to the 10-site campground, which only had two sites open when we pulled in around 6pm, since we decided we’d rather be off the road. We took a walk down the road with the dogs when we got there, and were really glad we’d made the decision to see more of the park than the visitor center we’d seen on the west side before going to Valdez. The colors were already starting to change, and when you can look one direction and see blue sky and sunshine reflecting on the glaciers, and look the other and see lowering dark skies making everything look stark, it’s sort of hard to decide where to look…so we just wanted to see as much as possible. We could normally have driven another ten or so miles down the Nabesna road, but with all the rain there was a 2-foot gully with fast running water that we weren’t going to attempt to cross, by foot or by truck.

We woke up Sunday morning to 25 degrees in the camper, with hard frost on the inside of the windows, and frost and iced puddles outside, although we didn’t take the thermometer out there. We had a little trouble getting the Buddy heater started after all summer in the closet, but it finally got going and with a little help from the electric heater and the gas stove, the inside temperature was up to 55 at 9am, which was tolerable, with the Buddy heater still running. We watched a number of tenters and van campers pack up, get in their warming vehicles, and drive off, but we stuck to our plan to head out for a hike, which ended up being two hikes, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. We had checked weather before we ran out of the cell zone and wherever it was coming from (supposedly Slana, which is only 28 miles north) said lows in the mid 30s, but either it was way off, or it’s just colder out by the glaciers.

The next day we had planned to hike the Caribou Creek Trail, but although it was warmer than the previous morning, it was also raining. We ditched the plan to hike in the bush, and drove out of the park to start our multi-day journey to Haines to get the ferry to Juneau.

0 Comments

<<Previous

Whitehorse to Watson Lake II

Skagway

Juneau

Tok to Haines

Wrangell-St. Elias NP

Meet the Moonracers

Archives

Categories