FRIDAY, SEPT 6

FRIDAY, SEPT 6:    

     Didn’t leave the campground til after 11:00.  I was up in the main lounge using the internet; Bill closed the RV up and went into town to get gas and ask about the road to Dawson City.  A 100-mile stretch of road from the town of Chicken (so named because the settlers wanted to name it for the territorial bird, the Ptarmigan, but couldn’t figure out how to spell it, so just called it Chicken instead) to Dawson City, called Top of the World Highway, has a well-deserved reputation of being one of the worst roads in North America.  It’s not paved, is rough, is narrow, has hairpin curves & steep drop-off’s, and no shoulders in places, soft shoulders in others.  And that’s in good weather.  But it’s the only way to Dawson from Alaska, so people drive it all the time.  (The only alternative is a 350+ mile drive up from Whitehorse.)

     We’d asked lots of folks about it during our travels – most said it was ok as long as you drove slowly and tried to stay near the middle of the road.  And we really wanted to see Dawson – it’s a truly historical town, the end of the journey for the Klondike gold-seekers.  The U.S. National Park Service has a cooperative agreement with Parks Canada and has a presence there, a continuation of what we saw in Skagway.  So we had pretty well settled that we’d drive it.  Bill just thought it was a good idea to check the latest reports, and the RV park manager told him that the Tok Visitors Center has up-to-date info on the hwy.  Well, Bill came back with a tale of woe.  It’s rained for 7 or 8 days straight there, and the road has turned to slick clay.  People by the dozens were sliding off, and the Yukon Hwy Dept was devoting its bulldozing equipment to pulling vehicles out.  Worst of all, one trucker who travels that road all the time told Bill that he saw RV’s off on the shoulder and flipped over. He’d never seen it so bad.   His advice:  “If you want to see Dawson, come back next year.” 

     We quickly decided to heed his advice.  So did a quick routing change, and drove back down the Alaska Hwy towards Haines Junction, the same way we came up 6 or 7 weeks ago. That’s the only other way you can get back down south.  Remembering how ugly that road had been, we didn’t relish driving that.  But far better to have to get a new set of tires than a new RV, or worse!  And actually, it wasn’t that bad.  Not nearly as bad as when we drove north on it.  They must have done some more work on it since then. 

     And it was another beautiful drive.  Not as breathtakingly gorgeous as yesterday, but beautiful nonetheless.  The golden landscape of fall here in the North is just wonderful.  We’d timed last year’s trip to the Grand Canyon North Rim to coincide with the turning of the aspens, but never even considered that here.  But how serendipitous - we’re being treated to it anyway! 

                                                                                                                      

                                                                        
      

       Had an uneventful border crossing early in the afternoon.  But the afternoon held a couple of other “events”.   The first was when, all of a sudden, Bill suddenly shouted out a 1-word expletive and swerved to the shoulder and slammed on the brakes. One of the kayaks was tipping and looked like it was about to fall off.  We’d been travelling through really strong cross winds through the valley.  Between that and the bumps & jerks on the road, it was enough to loosen the straps that were holding the kayaks in place.  So he got some extra rope out and worked on them.   

     The second near crisis was when we almost ran out of gas.  Intended to stop at a particular RV Park in late afternoon or early evening which we’d passed on the way up, and which Rob & Karen had recommended.  We passed a gas station just a few miles north of that campground, but even though we’d come nearly 300 miles, Bill didn’t stop to fill up because he figured there’d be gas at or near the campground.  Well, the campground had closed for the season.  A sinking feeling when you see a sign like that!  So we looked for a place to turn around and go back for gas, but couldn’t find one for several miles.  By then, we decided that it was almost as close to head on towards Haines Junction as it was to turn around.   But either way, we were very getting very low on gas.  When the warning ding went off, we estimated we still had about 20 miles to go (we had to convert everything from kilometers now). Bill was figuring out how he could ride a bike into town and return with a 5-gallon gas can.  Maybe hitch Pappy up and give him a crash course in mushing??  He predicted that we’d be coasting into a gas station at Haines Junction on fumes (and prayer).  He was right.  The tank took 32.7 gallons.  It holds 33.  Note to selves:  Never pass up a chance to fill up when we’re travelling through widely-spaced towns & service areas!  No  matter how close you think the next one might be! 

     Found a RV park right near the station and got set up easily.  However, there’s something wrong with the electricity.  All of the light switches work, but none of the outlets do, nor does the microwave.  Didn’t affect our dinner tonight – didn’t need the microwave, fortunately.  Bill’s baffled  - will look into it more in the morning, maybe try to enlist someone’s help.  

     Oh, my morning started off with about 2 dozen Canadian geese flying above me in classic V-formation, honking as they went by.  Really wonderful.   And ended with prayers of thanks for arriving safely here.