Tok, AK

June 26, 2011

Stayed in a Provincial Park campground last night - $12 again.  That makes up for fuel at over $6/gal in some places.  Today I bought just $40 worth to get us to Fairbanks and that was only $5.98/gal.  We didn’t do anything in Dawson City other than drive through and then took the free ferry across the Yukon River to the campsite.  The scenery here is different – huge expanses of rolling hills covered with trees with very little of the snowcapped peaks we saw in the SW of AK. 

We took Top of the World Highway today – dirt, holes, mud, some rain, max of 40 mph to the US boarder and then not over 25 to Chicken, AK.  From Chicken to Tok it was mostly paved with quite a few frost heaves so I had to drive very carefully.  For much of the ride we were above the tree line and rode through an area of Tundra meadows.  We also saw huge areas North of here that were burned from a fairly recent fire – must have been not more than 4 or 5 years ago because the new undergrowth is only about 5 ft high.

Tonight we took a site at a really nice private campground – we needed a shower and the idea of that and the ability to get on the web was attractive as well.  It’s 7 pm now and the sun is still shining high.  Soon we’ll cook supper, but we needed to have happy hour first and I also needed my shower – hair started to feel like it had bugs in it J.

BTW, we slept REALLY sound last night!

Some recent pics, including a nice Grizzly that sat by the road chewing:

This pic was taken leaving Skagway - up White Pass

Same little bear - a little closer this time (from the truck window :))

Waiting in line for the free ferry across the Yukon River

We had a lot of fun trying to write a heading for this one - maybe you can make one up for us?